FEST2003

The Hours
Stephen Daldry, director  

 Review by Rada Djurica   

"The Hours" is an Oscar voter's nightmare. It is an adaptation of Michael Cunningham's novel about three women in three different time periods whose lives are affected by Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." Nicole Kidman finally won an Oscar for Best Actress for the role of Virginia Woolf. Many people thought that she deserved an Oscar for "Moulin Rouge" last year. Here, Nicole Kidman plays the self-aware but psychologically unstable Woolf, at the time when she began writing her most famous novel, while she was living a frustratingly quiet life, supposedly for the sake of her mental health.

"The Hours" is a very ambitious piece of work. And it's full of celebrities. Besides Nicole Kidman, we have Meryl Streep, who has the largest number of Oscar nominations for acting awards, playing the role of a gay woman struggling with depression. Her daughter is played by Claire Danes.

Then, there is Julianne Moore, nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, who plays another alienated woman with a son and a husband she doesn't love. Her friend is played by Toni Collete, and John C. Reilly plays the unloved husband. Miranda Richardson is the beloved sister of Virginia Woolf. And Ed Harris is the former lover of Meryl Streep's character, living in Manhattan and dying of AIDS. "I think I'm only staying alive to satisfy you," Harris says (who must have lost at least 30 pounds for the role), who contemplates killing himself and cutting off his last living hours.

This is one hell of a circle of human destinies, from three different time periods. First, we have the life and death of Virginia Woolf, then the time of a woman who doesn't loves her husband in the 1950s, and a 21st Century gay woman and her former male lover, who is dying of AIDS. It all turns around Woolf's book "Mrs. Dalloway" and her problems with depression and alienation in the 1920s. All three female profiles are joined by their depression and by a common search for love.

The film begins with Virginia Woolf's suicide in England in the early 1920s. It keeps on flowing into the 1950s in a California suburb, with a woman (Julianne Moore) who struggles between her son and the husband she doesn't love but who adores her. We end up next in a modern Manhattan flat with Clarissa (Meryl Streep), who lives with her female lover and her daughter, and is preparing a party for her former lover (Ed Harris), who is dying of AIDS. They all struggle through the day, defined by themselves but equally defined by other people. Their struggle is central and very important. The women are externally serene, perfectionist party-throwers, hiding deep reservoirs of regret over missed opportunities in their lives.

"The Hours" is a triumph of emotionally and narratively complex filmmaking. These women share literal and figurative parallels with "Mrs. Dalloway" providing a thematic undercurrent that inspires the film director to dare to go further. Daldry does a good job of balancing the three stories. It sounds very complicated, but it is actually very simple. They all identify with Virginia Woolf.

I just think that "The Hours" should have received an award for makeup, because it is absolutely unbelievable how much Nicole Kiman looks like Virginia Woolf. Kidman's manifestation goes literally right down to her fingertips, from the movie's opening scene, set some 18 years later, as she writes a suicide note.