Both the film and the text show Hedda’s impatient and hostile personality, however, it is more difficult to imagine the scenes happening through the text because the text did not make the characters come to life, but the film did, and it truly showed the readers what Ibsen intended. The film’s interpretation of the text is mainly accurate and perfectly displays the emotions and intensity of the scenes. For example, Hedda’s lack of affection towards both Miss Tesman and her own husband. The film also shows us that Hedda’s bitterness towards Tesman is very apparent, and yet Tesman shows nothing but love and affection for Hedda.

The opening scene of when Miss Tesman was over at their new home, Hedda showed that she was not fond of Miss Tesman by being extremely rude, but Hedda’s actions and reactions seemed even more negative in the text because the text cannot capture a person’s emotions and actions as well as the film. Her reaction to Tesman asking her to be more friendly with Aunt Julie was off-putting, “Tesman, for God’s sake, don’t ask me to do that. I’ve told you that before. I’ll try to call her Aunt once in a while and that’s enough” (Act I, 789). Hedda was still reluctant on treating Aunt Julie with more warmth even though she is family just further proves her unpleasant personality.  

In my opinion, the text did lack the image I needed in order to fully comprehend the emotions in the story and to fully capture each character’s personality. I had a slight mental idea of both acts, but the film gave me the full image with more detail and showed me the relationship between each of the characters. Because the filmmakers needed to fit as much of the plot into such a short amount of time, much of the smaller, less important details were left out.