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 [...]