The Hours

[Pedro]

Pedro the Wombat wrote:
Julianne Moore's character was under-developed...but that's what made her character strong. She was so void of anything...her life was empty.


Shes really good at these rolls

Without a doubt.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I finally saw this movie. A melodramatic trojan horse. Great performances, great direction, terrible writing.

[joke08]

Saw it today. Overall I really liked it because I had to study some V. Woolf in school so I liked how she was the thread that ran through all the stories.
The most modern story was the one I didn't like, mostly Ed Harris, people don't really talk like that, I don't think. ANd this is the story that really forced the connections, which I didn't think was necessary.
Julian Moore was my favorite. and Nicole was good, but the nose was so-so. ugly really. heh.
Bad writing? I'd read the book, see how it compares. I haven't so i don't know.
Oscars don't look too bad. Scorcese, Adaptation, the Hours. Could be worse, could be Gladiator that sweeps.[/quote]

[Jeremy Blackman]

could be Gladiator that sweeps.

Not agaaaaain!  

[©brad]

Found a fantastic review of The Hours over at culturedose.com. I have yet to see the film so cannot comment, but even if you didn't care for it you should still enjoy this wonderfully written review by Keith Uhlich called "What is it to Cry?"


I totally did not expect this. So please bear with me through some initial, hyperbolic thoughts.

The Hours broadsided me like an oncoming train full of tear gas. I kid you not. For the last thirty minutes or so, including credits, I was a quivering, blubbering mess. This fragile state subsided for a few seconds when the house lights came up, only to start again when I tried to talk to my companion about what I was feeling. It's an experience I've never had at a movie, and it forced me to reflect on my past and relate it to any similar happenings.

Certainly I've cried at movies before. Andrei Tarkovsky's entire oeuvre wells me up because of its sheer mastery of form and content. Ian Holm's mid-film monologue in The Sweet Hereafter gets me every time. E.T. is an obligatory tear-jerker, profound in its simple childhood tale. Hell, I've even shed tears at the climax of the “lesbian-impregnated-with-the-reincarnation-of-Christ” episode of Millennium for its audacity and directness. I'm not averse to showing emotion, but I am haunted and disturbed by my reaction to The Hours. For a few minutes there I felt like I had really lost control and now, like a Kafka hero risking futility, I want to know why.

Previews for The Hours made it seem like some ungodly hybrid of literary adaptation (from a novel by Michael Cunningham) and feminist thriller (a day in the life of Virginia Woolf is connected thematically to both 50s housewife Laura Brown and present-day book editor Clarissa Vaughn). The most hilarious image in the trailer was of an egg being cracked against a bowl in tune with the sledgehammer-subtle music one expects of such ridiculous advertising. LOUD! FAST! THRILLING! This is what trailers promise us for each and every movie, regardless of actual content. It may draw in the patron, but it frustrates the critic. What do we take seriously? What are we reacting to? Tarkovsky defined his idea of cinema as “sculpting in time,” and the truth is each and every movie has its own interpretation of that credo that advertising ultimately cheapens. Thus, even the movies that require no more than sound bite attention spans are reduced (paging you postmodernists) to sound bites.

The Hours, in and of itself, turns out to be antithetical to what the advertising promises. From frame one the mood is quiet and introspective. Philip Glass' score, rightly minimalist and repetitious, counterpoints the action and carries one along like the running water into which Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) submerges herself in the pre-credits sequence. Following is a near-wordless ballet of imagery. Intercutting Woolf's 1920s England, Laura Brown's (Julianne Moore) 1950s era Los Angeles, and Clarissa Vaughn's (Meryl Streep) present day New York City, the sequence observes the three women waking up to start what, for each of them, will be a decisive day of their life.

The film effortlessly cuts back and forth between the three women's time periods over the course of its two hours, and I credit David Hare's sensitive and literate adaptation of Cunningham's novel for making this possible. If ever there were an explicit story arc representation of the “sculpting in time” credo, The Hours is it. This could have easily become an incoherent mess akin to what Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze satirized in their great Adaptation, but Hare, artist that he is, avoids the pitfalls admirably and without the slightest hint of strain.

For all Hare's great effort, I must say the choice of Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry as director is a strange though not incorrect one. Showing no discernible visual viewpoints or style, Daldry lets The Hours play before the audience mainly in close-up. There are few establishing shots, and the static camera sometimes threatens to turn the film into an insufferable Merchant/Ivory-like piece. Yet if I may betray my usual auteurist leanings, a great film does not always require a great director. Daldry's lack of viewpoint translates, cinematically, into a desire to stay out of the material's way. In some ways it reeks of an overzealous producer's choice, but I begrudgingly admit that it works extremely well. The close-ups recall the best D.W. Griffith melodramas, though here the passion originates from those in front of the camera as opposed to the one behind. Yet with these three actresses (each superb in her own way) you can be sure there's an emotional embarrassment of riches in every facial crease and flaw, whether these be actual God-given embellishments like Moore's freckles, or movie-enhanced ones like Kidman's unflattering, wholly necessary prosthetic nose.

All the elements are here for a good, solid work, but what is it, to return to my initial points, that makes The Hours such a moving and great film for me? I don't believe we humans display such brazen emotion so easily, and when a reaction such as mine outs itself as it did it practically calls out for reflection. As I think back over the experience, I keep coming back to my relationship with my mother, which I feel The Hours has helped me to understand more clearly. I don't know if I can go any further into that statement right now; the implications feel too personal in their profundity, and I'd hate to reduce them to some banal level. So let me put the question more simply—what does it mean that I cried?

I'll admit, not a day after seeing The Hours, I'm still struggling with the answer. How do I translate this emotion into words that not only do the film justice, but also passionately explain my own state of mind? As a critic, I want to make the experience of a movie universal for my readers. I want to touch on the key points that I feel affect us all and that the movie in question raises. Then I want the reader to, regardless of my star rating, see the movie and discuss it with me from his or her point of view. In this way we go from the universal to the personal and back again, along an ever flowing continuum like Virginia Woolf's river, each moviegoer achieving their own simulacrum of “sculpting in time.”

This “time” is what The Hours addresses, explicitly in title and through all surface and subtext: the time we are given to interact with each other, the time to reflect, the time to feel, the time to exist, the time to die. You can't reduce such ideas to homiletic sound bites and expect them to carry the weight they have in the context of the film. The Hours eschews such primitive ideology and absorption. And as E.M. Forster says, “Only connect.” So I leave you with this challenge, Reader: While I spend some more of my time pondering, spend some of your time with The Hours. Then let's meet again so we can continue the dialogue and hear, in our own time, what the other has to say

[©brad]

I just saw this last night and I liked it. Terrific performances, best being the obvious Nicole Kidman. However I thought Meryl Streep was a close second and am curious as to why she is not nominated in the best actress category, she has nearly if not more screen time than Kidman.

Yeah, the script was a little weak at times. Some lines made me cringe, but you have to remember that sometimes you can't avoid blatant exposition. I read an article on the making of the film and they said they were having trouble adapting the screenplay because you couldn't have three separate voice-overs in the film- that would get too complicated.

One scene that struck a chord with me was when Julianne Moore drops off her son at the baby-sitter and drives away. I had an almost identical experience when I was a young lad. I wasn't a little momma's boy who cried everytime she was away (actually maybe I was a momma's boy) but I did have nightmares as a kid of my mom dying. It was my only real fear, wasn't scared of ghosts or monsters like other kids. I remember her dropping me off at her friend's house because she was going out of town and my pops was away on business and I was just going ape shit.

* One thing I didn't like at all was the Ed Harris character having aids- gay men- aids stereotype I thought was completely unnecessary in the film. The fact that he has aids overshadows why he really is depressed- because of his mother. They should have just made him sick.

[estragon]

sphinx's note: look out, kiddos!  spoilers ahoy

just saw the hours yesterday. Have to agree Nicole Kidman did give a good performance although i saw her slip a few times which was annoying.

Cinema was full of old grannies (im not overexagerating!) mind you it was the middle of the day on a monday, *SPOILER*.....anyway the part where ed burns harris jumped out the window (sorry if u aint seen it) the woman in front of me hid behind her hands,  that was the best part.




EDITED by Admin for spoiler warning and correction of actor.
edited by sphinx for an even bigger spoiler warning

[life_boy]

Just saw The Hours today and thought it was good.  It wasn't great but it did have some very nice performances.  I was actually the most impressed with Meryl Streep's performance (not like I didn't know she could act, I just thought it was the best performance in the film) although Nicole Kidman was very good too.  

I think the script was the major flaw of the film because it seemed to me that Julianne's story wasn't completely fleshed out like the other 2 stories were.  Maybe I just missed something, but that's what it seemed like to me.  Ed Harris really looked like he had AIDS (the makeup was good, even down to the barely noticable lisions on his chest and shoulders) and his performance was good, but nothing to write home about.   I also liked Jeff Daniels little part.  I thought he was good and wish he had a little more screen/story time (but, it wasn't really about him so that could've messed up the story).


Anyway, overall a good movie.  I hated the last line.  I knew those were going to be the final words before she even said them.

*** (out of ****)

[Jeremy Blackman]

*BIG FAT SWEATY SPOILER*.....anyway the part where ed burns harris jumped out the window (sorry if u aint seen it) the woman in front of me hid behind her hands,  that was the best part.

Have you seen "The Dreamlife of Angels"? I think it was ripped off, at least a little.

[budgie]

I didn't much like or rate The Hours when I saw it. I thought it was ok, not boring, and I was moved by it. That review posted by cbrad has made me think a bit more about why and also why I don't think it's great. I think I was affected by the age-old romantic conflict between our desire for freedom/individuality and having to compromise on that desire because of social responsibilities. The Hours is a big noise because this story is classically a male one (see all westerns, The 25th Hour etc etc), but really it just fits the mould of the 40's woman's film.

My problem is half that it doesn't do anything really new with that formula, partly I know to say 'look, nothing's changed': the women are still being punished by isolation (Moore), segregation (Streep) and death, but also that it romanticises this as heroic and mythical. The women are still self-sacrificing and tragic, passive victims of circumstance, and validation is still given to Woolf's literary achievements over the 'ordinary' experiences of the other two characters. I like the thought that the film plays with our points of view of whether these women are worthwhile or just self-indulgent, but I don't think it presents an alternative way of understanding female experience. I think it won't appeal to many men, except as the usual voyeuristic, mythologising view that doesn't break out of its period constraints.

Instead, see Jennifer Aniston's character in The Good Girl:  that is something really new, and I found the movie ten times more moving.

As for Daldry, I can't get my head around why his movies are so cliched, heavyhanded and camp when he produced one of the most visually stunning and incisive pieces of theatre I've ever seen. But maybe that's the problem, the theatricality. The only arresting image in The Hours was Julianne on the flooded bed, but even that is kind of second-hand. And that crunch to black as Richard hits the pavement made me laugh out loud. I hate it when you see a director all excited about some inappropriate shot he's dreamed up.

Julianne Moore was superb, though, and it's great to see Streep back. I agree with whoever said the writing was awful: Streep made that kitchen scene with her performance alone.

[USTopGun47]

*BIG FAT SWEATY SPOILER*.....anyway the part where ed burns harris jumped out the window (sorry if u aint seen it) the woman in front of me hid behind her hands,  that was the best part.

Have you seen "The Dreamlife of Angels"? I think it was ripped off, at least a little.

Yes!  It did borrow from The Dreamlife of Angels.  It was more sugar coated (Phillip Glass' Minor Arpeggios) and not as grainy and real, though it did have some great lines.  It is very much in a sense a mainstream version, or at least it captures many of the same essences to say in a mainstream manner.  Of course, the window scene trumps all.  I thought it was much better executed in The Dreamlife of Angels, much more real.  However, The Hours did have that amazing dialogue.  I love both films.

[molly]

I saw it yesterday.
That Meryl Streep! That woman is fantastic! I couldn't take my eyes of her. Where and how does she find the idea for all that stuff she does with her part?!! Amazing... 8)