THE HOURS d: Stephen Daldry
The Hours (2002)
Direction: Stephen Daldry
Screenplay: David Hare, from Michael Cunningham’s novel
Cast: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Dillane, John C. Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Eileen Atkins
Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-winning The Hours uses Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway (whose working title was "The Hours") as the link that binds its three leading female characters. Far apart in terms of time and space, those three disturbed, unhappy women have in common both the deadness of a life of self-abnegation and the living reality of death itself.
Despite gaps in the narrative, Stephen Daldry’s stabs at melodrama, and one poor central performance, The Hours stands as an intelligent and deeply moving achievement. Most of the credit for the film’s success goes to Meryl Streep, outstanding as a 21st century Mrs. Dalloway; Nicole Kidman, surprisingly good as the suicidal Virginia Woolf; and Philip Glass, whose beautifully haunting score, alive with longing and poignancy, is perhaps The Hours‘ most important character.
David Hare’s screenplay moves back and forth in time and space, jumping from the English countryside of the early 1920s to a Los Angeles suburb in the early 1950s, and to New York City at the dawn of the 21st century. The changes in settings both accompany and push forward the development of the three disparate but interconnected storylines.
In 1923, as the severely depressed Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) creates the characters and the situations found in Mrs. Dalloway, we witness those very characters come to life decades later, in other corners of the world. In 1951, Californian housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), is both reading Mrs. Dalloway and experiencing moments from that book in her own life. In 2001, Manhattan book editor Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), like Woolf’s Clarissa Dalloway, is intent on throwing a party — in Vaughan’s case, for her AIDS-stricken former boyfriend, Richard Brown (Ed Harris), to whom she is utterly devoted.
Each story has its points of interest, though Laura Brown’s tale is the one weak link among the three. Apart from the fact that she coldly abandons her young son (who grows up to become Ed Harris’ Richard Brown), Laura’s predicament is little more than the old cliché about the woman who must find her true self away from the constraints of the home. Julianne Moore’s apathetic performance (a far cry from her sensitive portrayal in Far from Heaven that same year) fails to convey Laura’s inner dilemmas — freedom vs. convention; self-love vs. maternal love.
Instead of playing Laura as a woman who has had all her emotions buried deep inside, Moore opted to create a character totally devoid of any feelings. Laura’s face is a permanent blank; a close look into her eyes merely shows the expression(lessness) of that blankness. That is hardly the way to create a live human being, let alone a complex one with whom we are supposed to empathize.
Another character that failed to win my sympathy was Richard Brown, who is little more than your average movie AIDS victim. The highly capable Ed Harris is thus stuck with playing Richard as a three-note character: angry, angrier, angriest. Watching Harris do his shtick, never did I sense that Richard was having his mental faculties destroyed by the disease.
On the other hand, Meryl Streep soars above the limitations of both her character and her director, handling several highly melodramatic scenes without ever resorting to either self-pity or over-the-top histrionics. Her Clarissa may be a controlling type — while neglecting her own life — but Streep makes a potentially unsympathetic character likable by bringing forth Clarissa’s vulnerability and her desperate need to both give and receive love.
Now, throughout her 25-year career Meryl Streep has created countless great portrayals of all types of women, so we have come to expect continuous excellence from her. Nicole Kidman, however, is a different matter. True, she displayed a solid comic talent in Gus Van Sant’s quirky To Die For back in 1995, but her film career always seemed more like an offshoot of her marriage to Tom Cruise than a result of her on-screen achievements. Following a much hyped (and quite mannered) performance in Moulin Rouge!, Kidman reveals a quieter, more introspective side of her in The Hours.
Subscribe / Syndicate
Leave a Comment
Tags: David Hare, Ed Harris, Film Reviews, Four-Star Gay Movies, Four-Star Movies, Four-Star Oscar Nominees, Gay Interest, Julianne Moore, Lesbian Interest, Meryl Streep, Michael Cunningham, Mrs. Dalloway, Nicole Kidman, Oscar 2002, Oscar Movies, Stephen Daldry, The Hours, Toni Collette, Virginia Woolf
Comments
Leave a Reply
NOTE:
All comments are moderated and may take some time before they are posted. Different views and opinions are welcome, but courtesy is imperative. Rude/crass/bigoted comments and name-calling of any sort will be immediately deleted.
Also, please be aware that the Alternative Film Guide has no contact information for the talent mentioned in this blog and no information pertaining to or access to distributors'/producers' film prints.
