Movie Reviews

Stephen Daldry's The Hours is a very rich, well-crafted movie about three slightly-abnormal women trying to survive the unwelcome 'normality' imposed on their lives. Nicole Kidman plays the early twentieth-century author Virginia Woolfe, who at her husband's insistance has moved away from London to the countryside in an effort to ease the pain and sickness that plagues her. Julianne Moore plays a 1950's housewife named Laura Brown, who seems to have everything going for her, but it becomes very clear that she's deeply troubled. Finally, Meryl Streep plays a modern-day editor named Clarissa Vaughan, who is preparing to throw a party for her AID's-stricken friend Richard Brown (Ed Harris), who has just won a very prestigious award for his poetry.

The fascinating thing about The Hours is how all three different storylines (all in entirely seperate time-periods) are interwoven. To put it simply, Virginia Wolf (in 1929) is struggling to complete her latest book, "Mrs. Dalloway". Laura Brown (in 1951) is reading "Mrs. Dalloway", and we get the sense that part of her unhappiness has been sparked by a connection that she somehow feels with the novel. Finally, Clarissa Vaughan (in 2001) seems to be leading a life that resembles something of a modern adaptation of "Mrs. Dalloway" (in fact, at first I thought that perhaps the modern segments of this film were a modernized adaptation of the book, although that turns out to be not entirely true). That's the simplified version, but The Hours turns out to be quite a bit more complex.

There is generally excellent acting all around, and the technical aspect of the film (cinematography, direction, and especially editing) were all very good. I thought that Phillip Glass's score for the film was quite beautiful to listen to, but it almost seemed to be trying to communicate the characters' emotions a little too hard.

I really enjoyed The Hours, and look forward to seeing it again to try to pick up on more of the subtle connections among the three different storylines. I wasn't as thoroughly captivated by it as some people seem to have been, but it's still an excellent film.