There are times when we find ourselves in psychological and emotional crisis. While walking down the path of life, suddenly everything seems so meaningless and hopeless, that we reach a crossroad, where we have to make a choice between two opposite ways. What choice one makes? Life or Death. If we choose death, we go towards something unseen and uncertain. Though, we don’t know what lies on the other side, we are tempted to take a step towards the unknown just to escape our known pains. But if we choose life, we stay here with what we are going through, and face the hours.
*LONESOME.
*TORMENTING.
*HOURS.
As Virginia Woolf puts it, at one instance in the movie, *"A woman’s whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life." *This line almost sums up the soul of "The Hours"
The HOURS tells a story that spans a day in lives of three women, from three different generations yet linked by a single strong string - Virginia Woolf’s novel "Mrs. Dalloway"
The first story is of Virginia Woolf(played by Nicole Kidman) writing the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" in 1923. She is having a tough time with her mental illness and her strokes of depression. The second tale is that of Laura Brown(played by Julianne Moore), wife of a World War II veteran, who is reading Mrs. Dalloway in 1949. She is baking a cake as it’s her husband’s birthday. The third is Clarissa Vaughn(played by Meryl Streep), a lesbian in the 1990s. She is planning a party to celebrate a major literary award received by her good friend and former lover, the poet Richard, who is dying of AIDS.
The hours interweaves these three stories into an illusion where we see them to be that of an author, her fictional character and a depressed reader. But towards the end, things take a different turn. But yet leave a thought, as how close fact and fiction are to each other.
*As The Hours tick away:
The Hours is based on a novel of the same name written by Michael Cunningham. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999. Directed by Stephen Daldry(Eight, Billy Elliot*), The Hours revolves around weak moments in lives of three women where each of them deal with sucide and how each of them is affected by the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" - One while writing it, the second while reading it and the third while almost living it. At some point or the other, each of the characters realize that there are certain things which cannot be changed in any way, no matter what they do. The moments of helplessness and angst of living in helplessness lead these characters to end it all in one go. Some make it; Some fail to give up and embrace life through the long, lonesome, tormenting hours.
*The Hands of the Clock:
Each of the actors Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Jeff Daniels, Toni Collette give splendid performances. Especially Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Virginia Woolf is perfect. She uses an artificial nose for highlighting the sharp features of the famous author, as does she adapt to the body language and looks of a person going through depression.
*Quartz:
*In the director’s hat, Stephen Daldry gives the movie an almost poetic feel. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s work is specially noteworthy as he uses different hues and colors for the different times that the characters are living in. The background score by Philip Glass is soothing as well as hypnotizing.
*Quotes:
Virginia Woolf: You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard.
Clarissa Vaughn: That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.
Richard Brown: I’ve stayed alive for you. But now you have to let me go.
Virginia Woolf: Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.
Kitty: Oh, you’re reading a book?
Laura Brown: Yeah.
Kitty: *What’s this one about?
Laura Brown: Oh, it’s about this woman who’s incredibly - well, she’s a hostess and she’s incredibly confident and she’s going to give a party. And, maybe because she’s confident, everyone thinks she’s fine. but she isn’t.
Richard Brown: Oh, Mrs. Dalloway. Always giving parties to cover the silence.
Laura Brown: Obviously, you. feel unworthy. Gives you feelings of unworthiness. You survive and they don’t.
Virginia Woolf: Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It’s contrast.
Clarissa Vaughn: I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.
Julia: They’re all here, aren’t they? All the ghosts. All the ghosts are assembling for the party!
Virginia Woolf: It is possible to die. It is possible to die.
Kitty: All my life I could do anything. I could do anything, really. Except the one thing I wanted.
*About Virginia Woolf:
The famous English novelist of Victorian period whose works include The Voyage Out(1915), Night and Day(1919), Jacob’s Room(1922), Mrs. Dalloway(1925), To the Lighthouse(1927), Orlando: A Biography(1928), A Room of One’s Own(1929), The **Waves(1931), The Years(1937), Between the Acts(1941) Virginia Woolf had a complicated childhood. The consecutive deaths of her mother, her half sister and her father led her to a nervous breakdown. She and her sister Vanessa were also subject to sexual abuse by their half brother. All these emotional and physical torments induced in her, an ill mental health, sudden pangs of depression and a sexual orientation towards women.
*After various failed attempts, Virginia Woolf committed suicide in 1941 by walking into a river. She was a good swimmer. To cease herself from saving herself from drowning, she put heavy stones in her coat pocket before walking away to death.
On an End Note:
*The Hours is A Triumph.