The Hours (2002)

Waste of time

Simply Perfect

How sad is this?

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The HoursA smart intake on a parallel plotline that unfortunately loses its way down the road as it ages on screen resulting onto scattered thoughts that may be poetic but is surely redundant by then. David Hare's screenplay isn't that smart as it looks which then makes it disappointing as it never manages to come out from the self created loop. Stephen Daldry has done a marvelous work on executing this eerie world that it surpasses its scripts potential. Its strength obviously lies on performance due to such a big and brilliant cast like Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, John C. Riley and Allison Janey. The Hours is surely an important feature as it raises some thought provoking questions and satisfactorily proves its point but the question it begs the most is, is it entertaining or not.

I hesitated to watch this movie as it has an all female cast in the main roles, but since Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman are outstanding actors I gave it a shot. What a huge waste of my time! The only thing I can say that was good about this film was that it was intriguing enough to compel me to view it twice in order to understand what it was all about which was a study of two morose women, who cared for no one but themselves and a third, played by Streep, who was like a flighty bird flitting from being a happy party giver to one who is mourning a lost moment of happiness while still caring for the man she once loved. Amazing that so many viewers saw these self absorbed women as anything but pathetic creatures.

A bravura piece of screen writing by David Hare is the foundation on which this remarkable cinematic edifice is built. It is peopled by actors of the highest quality. Several of its images are truly haunting. Many of its scenes are tremendously powerful.The story concerns lives in different decades linked by Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. It's essentially a literary idea, based as it is on a book by Michael Cunningham. But Hare, director Stephen Daldry and their colleagues turn it into a poetic study of life and death. It is given urgency and unity by Philip Glass's score.The Hours aims high and mostly achieves what it sets out to do, but there are, perhaps inevitably, a couple of fumbles. A climactic scene between two of its leading actors is presented in a series of ever tighter close-ups, which ends up giving the impression that the characters might not be in the same room. If that was the idea, it was a mistake - we really need to feel them communicating, sharing the space. Also, one of the story strands feels much more contrived than the others, shoe-horned in to make it all work: this is, I'm pretty sure, a problem in the source material which the movie couldn't avoid inheriting.In the final analysis, these are quibbles. To embark on a project as ambitiously multi-layered as this in a commercial movie, and then to realise it as fully as The Hours does, is quite an achievement. Everyone connected with it should be very proud.

This is an excellent example of how the great and authentic adaptation of a famous novel should look like. The film consists of three different but firmly connected stories.In the first story Virginia Woolf is a sick writer in the 19 century and her husband sustains her. She is writing the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" about a woman that has completely different life and is the one who sustains a male sick writer. One day in life of Mrs. Dalloway, exactly as it is depicted in the novel, is presented in the third story of the film, which is set in the 21 century. Clarissa Vaughan is giving her best to organize a party for her ill friend Richard, but he is depressive and understands he is the obstacle for the happiness of Clarissa. He knows that from the experience of his mother (Larisa Brown), so he decides to go and let his dear friend live. Virginia, from the first story, knows that, too. She realizes that fact while composing the novel and is aware she is the one that has to go.In the second story set in 1950s, there is a portrayal of a woman, Larisa Brown, who struggles to find her own path in the society full of social stigmas (especially concerning women). She is reading the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" which she sees as the possible solution for her life. She is unstable and frustrated, always trying to have some sort of control in the situations in which it seems she has no control at all. Her friend and neighbor is completely different character, but also has her own struggles in men dominated world and wants to at least have an illusion of control. 'I want to drive the car myself', are her words that illustrate the point. That stigma of Laura's family life has to die, or else she has to die. She chooses to live and abandons her family for good.