Oh, man, what a fantastic movie is. This was actually my second viewing of The Hours. I first watched it back in 2010 and remembered being extremely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I would not have given this movie a chance back when it came out in 2002, but my interests in films have changed dramatically since then. Now that’s not to say I still can’t enjoy a blockbuster (I actually watched Captain America: Civil War earlier in the same day and loved it), but I am much more into the human aspect of independent dramas like The Hours than I am about action movies or comedies. This movie deals with depression, a topic that I am, unfortunately, very familiar with. And it does it from three different time periods with three different stories that are loosely at times (and not so loosely) during others. This movie knotted Nicole Kidman (Cold Mountain, Rabbit Hole) with, surprisingly, just her third nomination to date (as of May 2016) and her first and only win. With a prosthetic nose, she was virtually unrecognizable as Virginia Woolf. But it wasn’t her physical characteristics that stood out. It was how she immersed herself in the role of a woman who you would think had it all but was so mentally troubled that she could not find any happiness in her life. An accomplished actress, this is the performance of her career in a movie that shouldn’t be missed by anybody who views life with a cup half empty sort of mentality.
Told over the course of a single day during three different time periods (1923, 1951, 2001), this film centers around the inner turmoil affecting three of the finest actresses of our generation and the excellent class of supporting characters around them. With a run time of just under two hours, each of the three stories gets equal time to be told. The back and forth between the different time-frames could be confusing for some, but Stephen Daldry (The Reader, Billy Elliot) was masterful with his direction, and the editing of this film could not have been better. His work as director of this film was also recognized with an Academy Award nomination. In fact, The Hours had nine nominations in all though Kidman Best Supporting Actress nomination was the only one that captured a win. In 1923 Sussex, a despondent Virginia Woolf is having difficulty killing off the heroine in her soon-to-be classic novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Simultaneously, a hopeless and pregnant housewife (Julianne Moore – Still Alice, The End of the Affair) is being consumed by Woolf’s novel while Clarissa (Meryl Streep – The Iron Lady, Kramer Vs. Kramer) is planning a period in 2001 for her good friend and former lover Richard (Ed Harris – Pollock, The Truman Show), a poet turned novelist who is dying of AIDS. There aren’t a lot of happy people in this movie, and if you think you’ll leave this movie with a more positive outlook on life than you had going in, you might be disappointed. All three movies begin with the lead woman having breakfast. Next, all three movies involve the planning of a party. Finally, all three movies end in sadness.
Virginia Woolf’s story was my favorite of the three. When you see this movie, it’s impossible to take your eyes off of Nicole Kidman’s face (especially her nose). The woman you’ll see looks virtually nothing like Kidman. It mesmerized me. If you don’t know Woolf’s story, I’ll try not to spoil it here for you. I didn’t know it myself. Like many writers, she struggled with mental illness. At the same time, she has the adoring love of her husband Leonard (Stephen Dillane – television miniseries John Adams), who is also her publisher and her protector. Virginia and Leonard live in a quiet place, with plenty of people to serve them. Before this, Virginia had spent time in London with her sister. The much busier and much more prosperous place took its toll on Virginia. She was angry, heard voices, and experienced blackouts. So to keep her from continuing to go crazy, Leonard brought her back home. And on the day that we experience with her in The Hours, we see a calmer woman, but one who clearly has much more going on in her head than she can manage. The look in her eyes alone tells her that she is not okay. Kidman portrays Virginia Woolf in a way that is so successful that in such a limited number of minutes, we believe that she truly loves her husband but is so utterly unhappy with her world. We get to learn much about what she was thinking while changing the story of Mrs. Dalloway.
Richard is a man who has completely lost his way. He doesn’t leave his apartment once during this movie. The only time we really see him is when he is in the presence of Clarissa. Here is a man who is clearly weighing the pros and cons of his life and realizing that the cons clearly have the advantage. He is alone and suffering and goes so far as to say that he is only alive because of her. He lives for Clarissa. Ironically, the former lovers have since sought out partners of the same sex at some point since their breakup. The movie isn’t obvious on how long the pair were together or what led to their breakup. However, they have become better friends than they (probably) ever were lovers. Clarissa is currently in a less than ideal relationship with her partner Sally (Allison Janney – television’s The West Wing, television’s Master of Sex) while Richard is alone though his former partner, the flamboyant Louis (Jeff Daniels – The Lookout, television’s The Newsroom) is enjoying being healthy and the riches that come along with it. Though unanticipated, Louis decides to attend the party, leaving Richard alone in his stuffy apartment to feel even worse about himself.
Laura (Moore) is clearly caught in a place where keeping up with the Jones seems to be a theme. She’s married to Dan (John C. Reilly – Step Brothers, The Good Girl) and has an eight-year-old son. She is also pregnant. On this day, it is Dan’s birthday. She decides to bake him a cake and her son to help, but they fail miserably. She’s failing miserably at life, and her happiness has her son (and the audience) feeling uneasy during each of her scenes. Mrs. Dalloway seems to be her Bible, which isn’t necessarily a good thing for this woman. And you can see her son suffering from the consequences of having a physically present mother but emotionally unavailable.
Philip Glass’s score is like a character in itself. It knows its importance in tieing all the scenes together. It starts and stops and starts and stops until unifying each of these stories together. The music is always near, painfully piloting the story at every turn, quiet at times while loud and menacing at others. As the movie moves towards its conclusions, the music partners with the entire ensemble in making us experience the pain that these characters are experiencing up until the very end.
The way that the stories intertwine without overlapping is fantastic. When such a technique is done well, a movie succeeds immensely. And when it does not, it fails miserably. The editing here was fantastic, and Daldry definitely had a pulse on the story. He told the story he wanted to tell and absolutely got the most out of the characters. So to me, even if this is one of those movies that you didn’t want to like, if you really gave it a chance, you’ll be satisfied with the result. You might not leave the film with the most optimism in your life, but you’ll leave feeling that everyone involved in the process left everything on the table.
Plot 9.5/10
Character Development 8/10 (there was just so much to develop her that it was a little overwhelming for one film to do perfectly)
Character Chemistry 8/10 (Streep and Harris could have been better…while their acting was fine, I never felt any sort of emotional connection between them…and in watching them, it almost felt like I was watching two actors on a stage somewhere rather than two characters in a film)
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 9.5/10
Directing 10/10 (could have been a disaster in the wrong director’s hands…in the right director’s hands, it earned nine Academy Award nominations)
Cinematography 9.5/10
Sound 10/10 (marvelous)
Hook and Reel 9/10 (this was a movie I only watched because I felt I had to…I never felt I would be able to relate to it as much as I did)
Universal Relevance 9.5/10 (themes of madness, depression, and suicide have been around forever and will continue to be around forever)
92%