Rebecca

 

Title-- Rebecca

Release Year--  2020

Running Time--  2 Hours and 3 minutes

Director--  Ben Wheatley

Cast--  Lily James, Armie Hammer, Kristen Scott Thomas, Keeley Haws, Ann Dowd, Sam Riley, Tom Goodman-Hill, Mark Lewis Jones, John Hollingworth, Bill Paterson, Ben Crompton

After falling quickly for a widower and marrying, a young newlywed arrives at her husband’s overly imposing family home only to find herself fighting against the legacy of his late wife Rebecca.

A young woman in her early twenties (Lily James) while working as a hired companion to a wealthy American woman (Ann Dowd) is introduced to an extremely wealthy English widower, Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer).  After a whirlwind two week courtship they are married and Max takes her home to his family estate Manderley.   The new Mrs. de Winter is introduced to the house staff and finds that she is highly disliked by the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kristen Scott Thomas) for no apparent reason.  

As Mrs. de Winters learns how a country manor house works, she finds that she is constantly compared to Max’s first wife Rebecca.  Mrs. Danvers is doing what she can to implant in Mrs. de Winters’ brain that she will never be as beautiful, intelligent or sophisticated as the previous Mrs. de Winters and continually undermining the way the new Mrs. de Winters is trying to make the running of the house her own.  Mrs. de Winters learns that the previous Mrs. de Winters died in a boating accident and that Mrs. Danvers had been with her as her companion/servant since Rebecca was a child.

In an attempt to try to befriend Mrs. Danvers, the new Mrs. de Winters asks for her help so she can learn how Rebecca did things in the house which leads to Mrs. de Winters to revive Manderley’s annual costume ball.  She takes a suggestion from her lady’s maid to come up with a costume by looking at the pictures around the manor house and Mrs. de Winters settles on a stunning portrait of a former lady of the house, Caroline de Winters, as her inspiration.  On the night of the ball a drum roll sounds and Mrs. de Winters shows up at the bottom of the portrait dressed exactly like Caroline in the picture.  Max demands she go back to their room and change and it is then that Mrs. de Winters learns that not long before her death wore the exact same dress.

This cements in her mind the thought that Max regrets marrying her and is still madly in love with the seemingly perfect Rebecca.  Mrs. Danvers’ torture of Mrs. de Winters comes to a head when she tries to get Mrs. de Winters to commit suicide but it is thwarted when a huge disturbance is discovered off the coast by the manor.  A diver finds a decomposing body on a sunken boat, a boat that turns out to be Rebecca’s boat.  It is then that Mrs. de Winters goes in search of Max.  She finds him in a small hut where he admits to her that he has loved her the whole time they have been married and that his marriage to Rebecca had been nothing but a sham.  He tells her that Rebecca was a cruel, selfish and manipulative woman that made everyone believe that she was a perfect wife and paragon of virtue and she had several different affairs with several different men throughout their marriage.  The problem comes for Max when Rebecca’s body is found due to him identifying remains that he claimed was Rebecca’s a year prior.

I am not very sure how I feel about this film.  There were some high points and there were some low points but I’m not sure the highs were high enough to call it a good film or that the lows were low enough to call it a bad film.  It seemed to be just okay.  

The first thing to know is that this film is a remake of a film of the same name made in 1940 starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine with Alfred Hitchcock as director and David O. Selznick as producer.  For anyone that doesn’t know any of those names, these people are a big deal and for my money, it would be truly hard to outdo a film with these names in it, especially for a film that is rushed out to Netflix.  Please don’t get me wrong, I do not think that the actors in this 2020 version of the film did a poor job, I just think that sometimes it is better to leave well enough alone (especially since the 1940’s version is looking at a critic score/audience score of 100%/92% compared to the 2020 version standing at 42%/42%).  However, I have never seen the 1940’s Rebecca, so I can not compare one film to the other.

Something I HATED was the fact that Lily James’ Mrs. de Winters HAS NO NAME.  She is only Mrs. de Winters (but upon researching a little I did see that the 1940’s version was the same way) and I feel like perhaps it is a little lazy.  

So, this film, watch it or skip it?  Watch it because the ending is the best.  It really picks up after Rebecca’s boat is found.  I will just leave it there so that the ending is not spoiled.  This film is on Netflix, check it out and Don’t Forget the Popcorn!