Delayed Reaction: Resurrection

Premise: A figure from a successful executive’s past returns and throws her life into disarray.

 

We’re really going to let Rebecca Hall’s career go by without any awards attention, huh? She’s been killing it in lead and supporting performances since 2006. It’s hard to find a movie in the last 15 years where she didn’t stand out. However, she always seems to be in the wrong role, in the wrong indie, or in the wrong blockbuster. Penelope Cruz got the Oscar for Vicky Christina Barcelona. The Prestige is the last Christopher Nolan movie that failed to make blockbuster money. She’s in one of the divisive Marvel movies (Iron Man 3). When she’s great in indies like Christine or Professor Marston & the Wonder Women, they are movies the small studios can’t get more people to watch in time. She even directed a movie last year, Passing, that was very well received and fought with all its might for Oscar consideration and failed to get any, even with Netflix backing it.

 

She is still only 40. She has time. It’s just a bummer to see how good she is in something like The Night House or Resurrection and knowing that she won’t get the recognition she deserves for them because they’re the wrong genre. Resurrection is one hell of a performance in a very weird movie.

 

The plot itself sounds a little silly. Hall plays Margaret, a successful executive with a daughter set to go onto college. One day, she sees a man from her past, played by Tim Roth, which causes years of trauma to bubble up. We learn that in her past, he had incredible control over her and made some truly incredible claims to maintain that control. This all causes Margaret to fall apart in increasingly manic ways, which Hall plays wonderfully. I’m not sure there’s an actress I’d rather watch having a bad fucking day than Rebecca Hall. She reacts convincingly to nearly everything. There’s one scene in particular that’s an unbroken monologue of her explaining her past with Roth’s character that’s as good as anything I’m likely to see this year. It took me a while to even realize the shot was unbroken.

 

I don’t want to overpromise, but the ending is very weird and very satisfying in a “No, no, yes” kind of way. I do think at times the movie leans a little too hard on how much it can make Rebecca Hall break down. I wonder how tedious some of the middle beats would’ve been without someone of her caliber in the role. Thankfully, she is in the role though.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend