The Hours

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Like slowly drowning in a vast, estrogen-scented sea of despair. This suffocatingly morbid and joyless film might best be viewed by condemned criminals as they may afterwards fight the executioner for the right to throw the switch on their electric chair. It's rather like watching a horse-race between three plot lines as each competes to be the most depressing. Who will win? Nicole Kidman's criminally self-involved Virginia Wolf hysterically berating her husband for having the unmitigated nerve to move her to the countryside? Or will it be Julianne Moore's suicidal housewife slowly eating her heart out over her failed marriage and letting her son pay for her inaction. Perhaps it will be Meryl Streep's impotent caretaker presiding over the last tortured days of Ed Harris' crumbling AIDS victim. Yes, folks, it's a non-stop laugh-o-rama. Maybe it'll interest you to see how these plot lines interweave over time and unfold through an interconnected history of pain and desperation. But if you're like me, you'll find your brain has decided to step out mid way for a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon on TV somewhere. Drama fails to compell or even convince when all the news is either bad or mundane. Would it have been too much to ask for ONE redeemable male character? Will the cinematic deconstruction of the 1950s, an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity, EVER end? And one must wonder what the message is when each of our heroines finally DOES spontaneously assert themselves in a way I won't spoil. If ever a movie needed some antidepressants, this film takes the taco. This movie review by Erik Gloor

The Hours is a great achievement for all of the people involved in this project. Credit must go to the director, Stephen Daldry, who pulls all the elements together. Having admired the text where this film is based, I wondered what would any writer do with Michael Cunningham's book where three lives of three different eras intermingle with one another. David Hare treatment of the material rings true to the novel in which it's based. The biggest revelation in the film is Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf. I have been a great admirer of this, up to now, underrated Australian actress, right from her beginnings down under. Her approach to the role is very subdued, perhaps underplaying, where someone else might try to have gone over the top stressing Virginia's madness. All the praise Ms Kidman has received for this film is certainly well deserved. The other great performance is Julianne Moore. This actress keeps getting better and better with any new appearance on the screen. Her Laura Brown is a pathetic figure. She's a desperate soul trapped in the Los Angeles suburbia of the 40s. She has a man, who obviously loves her. She has a son who shows all the signs, even then, of what he might ultimately become in life. Laura wants to end it all. She just doesn't belong in that world of domestic bliss. Ms Moore gets the right tone in playing Laura. There's not a wrong movement in her approach to this demanding role. The third outstanding portrayal is Meryl Streep's. The sure hand of the director is obviously behind her reining the excesses she likes so well. This Clarissa Vaughan is in limbo in her own life. Her relationship with the younger lover is clearly over, or at least seen better days. Ms Streep gives a dignified reading of this character. The rest of the cast is brilliant: Miranda Richardson, Tony Colette, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, and little Jack Rovello. They are all on the mark.

"The Hours" (and I suppose the book on which it is based, although I haven't read it and don't much want to), reduces the vigor and complexity of Woolf's novel to some paean to self-pitying "feelings" about, oh, you know, time, life, all that stuff we're supposed to think is "universal." How about Woolf's meditations on war, gender, and violence in _Mrs. Dalloway_ and the facts (whatever one makes of them) that she was sexually molested as a child, that her suicide took place during another war, and that she and Leonard were on the Gestapo's hit list? Stripping away all the actual material facts of people's lives and times leaves all this relentless emphasis on their supposed "feelings" simply meaningless and manipulative. It's also extremely irritating to have the artist Vanessa Bell reduced to some fluttering mother hen looking with incomprehension at her dotty genius sister Virginia, and to have the real erotic memory at the core of _Mrs Dalloway_, the kiss with Sally, switched to a kiss with Richard, and Sally reduced to the dull spousal role that is Richard's in the novel. But even as a film taken on its own terms this was overdesigned and stupidly pretentious.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie, and once I did I could not believe the good reviews it got. The fine actresses did well with what little they had but the internal monologues from the book did not translate well into screen dialogue, and the pedantic, paper thin faux-feminism weighted the story down as much as those stones in Virginia Woolf's pockets. Also, I laughed out loud at a few of the scenes with Ed Harris talking about his writing, and I thought the score was intrusive. I understand a great deal of talent and effort went into this film, but the result is pretentious and annoying. I'm amazed at how many people don't notice how bad the script is. For a good movie on writers and writing see "Wonder Boys." For a good movie on suicide see "Ordinary People." For a good movie upper middle class female oppression see "Far From Heaven." This movie sadly tries to do all and fails.