"Be Right Back" contrasts with its predecessors in looking more accessible from our standpoint (and hence more realistically threatening), if still presumably an alternative reality, since car technology that we have now here contrasts with higher tech - including the one that allows a dead person to be recreated on-screen or as a voice - on the basis of their online presence, phone calls, etc., and ultimately even moulded into corporeal form if a customer so wishes.
Hayley Atwell as Martha does so wish, and is quite delightfully corporeal; and viewers like myself may be judgmental (jealous!) enough to regard as her a bit too hot for Domhnall Gleeson's Ash. But she's devoted to him anyway, and so is heartbroken when he takes the car out (from the inherited childhood home of his they are now residing in?) and never returns.
And it's not academic in plot terms that the recreated version of Ash proves a FAR better lover physically for Martha than his flesh-and-blood predecessor. This is is the naughtiest moment of an episode suffused with an indefinable but tangible eroticism, and Martha's initial need for any contact having faced such sudden loss rather rapidly gives way to a need for physicality - satisfying for her even as it rapidly makes her aware that this is NOT the real Ash!
The disparities only multiply (as of course they would) as time passes, and the stress of "having" but "not having" reaches a crescendo quite rapidly at Beachy Head or somewhere similar! A wonderfully dramatic and poignant moment that easily could have gone one of several ways.
That that moment dissipates in the way it does proves powerful stuff, and leaves it abundantly - remarkably - clear that Martha has regained control of the situation, accommodated to it, and done something that offers far more for her and her daughter than it offers "Ash".
Martha is therefore first bereaved and definitely the victim, and we out here can't help feeling that Ash's geeky absent-mindedness might somewhere down the line have contributed to her being in that situation. She then goes through various stages of disgust, outrage, utilisation, advantage-taking, disillusionment, anger, disgust again, accommodation and possibly exploitation. It's a roller-coaster therefore, but also one harking back to other films we've seen in which "android rights" can be trampled on as we see fit. Android Ash did not ask to be created, creeped Martha out in spite of everything, yet ended up with a confined shadow existence because - in the end - that was the best she could (or chose to) (or felt compelled to) offer him.
Maybe "he" cares not, or maybe he does? And maybe the "real" Ash is up there in heaven wondering how he had so little to say about his "re-creation"?
If you're thinking from this description that Hayley Atwell runs this show, that's probably correct. But if you're thinking that means that Domhnall Gleeson does little, that's wrong. His acting in the "dual" roles is in fact fine and nuanced indeed.
Overall, another EXTREMELY thought-provoking - if indeed "dark" - setup.
Well done!
Hayley Atwell as Martha does so wish, and is quite delightfully corporeal; and viewers like myself may be judgmental (jealous!) enough to regard as her a bit too hot for Domhnall Gleeson's Ash. But she's devoted to him anyway, and so is heartbroken when he takes the car out (from the inherited childhood home of his they are now residing in?) and never returns.
And it's not academic in plot terms that the recreated version of Ash proves a FAR better lover physically for Martha than his flesh-and-blood predecessor. This is is the naughtiest moment of an episode suffused with an indefinable but tangible eroticism, and Martha's initial need for any contact having faced such sudden loss rather rapidly gives way to a need for physicality - satisfying for her even as it rapidly makes her aware that this is NOT the real Ash!
The disparities only multiply (as of course they would) as time passes, and the stress of "having" but "not having" reaches a crescendo quite rapidly at Beachy Head or somewhere similar! A wonderfully dramatic and poignant moment that easily could have gone one of several ways.
That that moment dissipates in the way it does proves powerful stuff, and leaves it abundantly - remarkably - clear that Martha has regained control of the situation, accommodated to it, and done something that offers far more for her and her daughter than it offers "Ash".
Martha is therefore first bereaved and definitely the victim, and we out here can't help feeling that Ash's geeky absent-mindedness might somewhere down the line have contributed to her being in that situation. She then goes through various stages of disgust, outrage, utilisation, advantage-taking, disillusionment, anger, disgust again, accommodation and possibly exploitation. It's a roller-coaster therefore, but also one harking back to other films we've seen in which "android rights" can be trampled on as we see fit. Android Ash did not ask to be created, creeped Martha out in spite of everything, yet ended up with a confined shadow existence because - in the end - that was the best she could (or chose to) (or felt compelled to) offer him.
Maybe "he" cares not, or maybe he does? And maybe the "real" Ash is up there in heaven wondering how he had so little to say about his "re-creation"?
If you're thinking from this description that Hayley Atwell runs this show, that's probably correct. But if you're thinking that means that Domhnall Gleeson does little, that's wrong. His acting in the "dual" roles is in fact fine and nuanced indeed.
Overall, another EXTREMELY thought-provoking - if indeed "dark" - setup.
Well done!