The Hours
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Movie Reviews of The Hours
Movie Review: Many, Many, Many Hours
Summary: 5 Stars
The HoursFrom a Pulitzer Prize winning book comes the movie event of the year. Imagine the lives of three separate women, each a reflection of the others, intertwined yet fiercely independent, and you have the cinematic masterpiece of "The Hours".
Virginia Woolf. Laura Brown. Clarissa Vaughn. Two fictional, one is real. Three women who live a day in their lives that is a day that is their life. In her day, Woolf starts writing one of her masterpieces, "Mrs. Dalloway", which in her day, Laura Brown starts reading, which in her day, Clarissa Vaughn is living.
This unique, tri-layered story allows for complexity not often found in film: writer, reader, and character, honoring each spirit wholly and totally. This powered the plot of the book, and the movie successfully managed to honor that device. When one thing happens to a character, it may or may not show up in another character's story. Part of the pleasure and surprise of watching "The Hours" is trying to find those story elements mirrored in each other's story, and this lends itself to multiple watchings.
Whereas the story is unique, it's the beauty of the moments in "The Hours" that stun and awe any watcher. The buying of flowers. A funeral for a bird. A brief, questioning kiss. Despair in a hotel room. This isn't a film that has you at the edge of your seat, waiting for the next exciting, thrill seeking moment to grab you, but one that draws you in slowly, completely, as you wait to discover the blossoming of each of these women.
What is thrilling is the performances. Nicole Kidman, almost unrecognizable as Woolf, has created a completely nuanced character. She is real, alive, complex. Try watching her performance and remembering her fantastic turn in "Moulin Rouge", and you'll appreciate her talent. Julianne Moore's internal pain as Laura Brown is so realized, it's palpable. Meryl Streep brings to reality a crumbling Clarissa with both dignity and pain. Clearly, these three complicated roles needed equally talented actresses.
Some people may be put off by the film's subject matter, or pacing. But "The Hours" is a film that demands repeated viewings to appreciate everything it has to offer, which is, one of the best cinematic events in recent history.
Movie Review: I must defend this film.
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is the first film in a long time where I actualy agree with the film that may or may not bring home the big Best Pic award at the Oscars. Normally that prize is given to the film that's the most showy and obvious. This film had the power to do something very few films can do today and that is, give the audiece some more credit and give them some more to think about afterwards. Everyone is wondering WHY they were so sad. In the great tradition of Mr. David Lynch I believe that we don't always need to be spoon fed the answers. Haven't you ever been sad and could not for the life of you figure out why? The human person is far more complex then to just sum things up in a neat package. It's far too easy to dimiss this film as a "chick-flick" and just say that women are too dramatic. Women are complex and beautiful creatures. They are far more keen to their emotions then men are, and that is what the film is about. I thought this was a striking film and simply one of the best of the year. But to me it does stand out just a little bit more because it had a wonderful conclusion and I couldn't stop talking about it afterwards.And about the whole repressed Lesbian thing. That is far too easy an answer. The only Lesbian in the movie was Meryl Streep, Virginia Wolf and Julianne Moore did it out of a repressed longing just to be free to do whatever they wanted. It was a sign of inner rebellion. To dumb the film down into "a movie about three depressed lesbians" is an insult to the film and the three great actresses who brought it to life. Each performance was just an eye opening experience, and the cross over from past to present was very reminiscent of another great film of 2002, Adaptation.
In a time where movies are far too straight forward and peddle the audience with easy answers it's nice to see that film's still leave themselves open to interpretation. Lives are not so neat and easy to explain. When you can answer all the questions that come up in your life abouts sadness and joy then come back to this film and ridicule it, but if you cannot I suggest you watch it again and admire it for what it doesn't answer.
To the many women who live long hard hours.
Movie Review: Life Layer upon Layer Interwoven all in Hours
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Hours" is indeed a powerful film. The power trio of Kidman, Moore, and Streep turn in a subtly nuanced coup d' grace of a performance that to watch is to sit on the sidelines of a Super Bowl of an event of acting."The Hours" is a skillful tale of interwoven lives threaded together through different ages and times; held together by a concept, an idea, and a tale--Virginia Wolff's "Mrs. Dalloway." Each life is somewhat affected by the other as Virginia Wolff unconsciously pulls the strings in the writing of a story. When Kidman's character proclaims, "We still have to decide the fate of our heroine (largely paraphrased, mind you)," as the audience, we sit with baited breath knowing the stroke of her pen will determine the fate of Moore's post-WWII houswife's life and Streep's 2001 New York City socialite life.
The screenplay and director's editing are quite a notch above creative genius. In the opening scenes there are flowers and the scenes switches effortlessly from one of the woman's life to the other as they prepare for the looming weight of a fateful day each with flowers in the mix. The effect is that we suspend time and follow the stories without conscious thought stepping back and forth. The three stories in effect become one, held together by the overriding sense that they are not happy lives, they are not lives of freedom, but lives subservient to the will of others.
One of the best features of this DVD is the voice over narrative of Streep, Moore, and Kidman. It is illuminating to hear their individual approach to acting and their experiences making this film. It is like an acting class taught by the most prominent acting greats of our times. It was very interesting to hear that Streep was proud that she was the only actress that gets up in the morning looking like she had been asleep. She is proud of this fact and points it out. That's a film perspective we didn't get in past film classics and makes the DVD purchase worth the price of admission. Don't miss out on the "Hours." Surprisingly enough, it is life affirming but only in a subtle way.
Movie Review: A stunning cinematic achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Hours" may or may not be the best English-language movie to have been released in 2002, but it is, to me, the most exquisite and delicate. As such, it is not designed to be a commercial movie for mass consumption; indeed, its relative box office success can probably be attributed to its powerhouse cast, led by Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. To people who love great acting, any one of these women in a movie makes it worth seeing. To have all three together is rather intimidating, and that fact, I believe, is what lead to some of the movie's negative reviews since, with that much talent, a project can be seen as all about the stars. Adding to the talent overload are such marvelous actors as Miranda Richardson, Claire Danes, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Toni Collette, Allison Janney and Stephen Dillane. The movie, based on a Pulitzer prize winning novel, contains three stories which touch upon each other but rarely actually connect, the common thread being English author Virginia Woolf [Kidman] and her novel, `Mrs. Dalloway". Woolf was a brilliant writer who suffered from severe mental illness. She committed suicide in 1941 when she finally could no long cope with her disease. There is the story of Laura Brown [Moore], set in 1951, in which the character, who is reading Woolf's book, toys with the idea of suicide. The last story revolves around Clarissa Vaughn [Streep]. Set in present day, it is about her relationship with her ex-lover [Ed Harris], who is dying from AIDS and whose only out seems to be to kill himself. On the surface, all this dallying with suicide may seem grim and depressing, the movie is actually life-affirming, but, as I've said, it's not meant for mass consumption.
Kidman deserved her Oscar for Best Actress in "The Hours". Like Bette Davis before her, she is always willing to take on an acting challenge. Here, having donned a prosthetic nose, she is barely recognizable. Still, I wish there were an Oscar for Best Ensemble Acting because that is the one "The Hours" should have received because each remarkable individual performance adds to the power of the film as a whole.
Movie Review: The poet found
Summary: 5 Stars
Virginia Woolf is writing Mrs. Dalloway in a country house. A suburban wife prepares for her husband's brithday and a lesbian mother wants to give her best friend a party (for an award he has won). These three moments reflect the complexity of life in three diferent times. These three moments reflect the conflicts of repression, passion, madness and compromise. Without a doubt the most important dialogue of the movie is said by Woolf, as she decides not to kill Mrs. Dalloway: It must be the visionary... she has to kill the poet. This line just gave me the chills as I heard for the first time. It is the poet closing the circle the one who dies... the one who takes his own life... it is her and it is the little abandoned boy. Woolf must stay in the country because the city is driving her mad, but it is her choice, and she cannot live being in the margin of the world. She must be in the most trivial parties, she must be in the most absurd rhythm of the city, because it is the world, and she cannot live aside from it. It is the poet's death which redeems society. It seems to give some sense to those plain unwanted lifes. Like that suburban woman, who has escaped from the horrors of war through a marriage she didn't want, and which represses her true desires.I've heard so many times that this is a sad movie. It was not to me. It was wonderfull and beautiful. Even the suicide scenes are beautiful. Kidman really earned her oscar in this movie (though I think she really deserved it the year before, for The Others, instead of Halle Berry). And it was just a crime the Julianne Moore did not won for her role (come on!, what is wrong here? when I could point several floppy and flawed scenes in Chicago!).
This is a movie about thinking and it is for you to think. what is the relation between poetry and art, and the everyday life... no, not entertainment and life... art and life. It is about finding the real poet of the world, the one compromised enough to it, to the point of die for it (and when I say the world I mean it in its more human sense -I am not talking here about politics, or warriors or killers).