The Hours' is a strange film: sad, intelligent, expertly crafted and superbly acted, it should be great, but it adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
The film focuses on three women living parallel lives in different times and places during the last eighty years. In the 1920s Virginia Woolf (an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman) is writing her novel Mrs Dalloway', which is about a hostess who is hiding how empty she feels behind a mask of happiness, much like 1950s housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) and modern-day socialite Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep). All are locked into suffocating relationships with men who do not understand them, except for Clarissas ex-lover, the dying poet Richard Brown (Ed Harris), who understands all too well. There are other themes running through the womens' lives: emotional repression, bisexuality, parenthood and above all suicide. Director Stephen Daldry does a good job of visually showing how the women echo each other they look into mirrors, depressed at what they see there, flowers are arranged and moved, food is created and destroyed. A strong image is that of eggs being broken, for the women lead eggshell lives strong on the surface but fragile and liable to break into shards. Other images also linger, as this is a very well shot film: a woman walking into a river, the terrible arid neatness of Laura's house, a child's judging eyes, water flooding a hotel room.
Daldry also draws out nuanced and powerful performances from his actors, though you would expect them from such a talented cast. As well as Harris and the three leads it also includes John C. Reilly, who seems to be in every good film out at the moment, Toni Collette, Miranda Richardson and Stephen Dillane in a complex, touching role as Woolf's husband Leonard. The actors are given a good script to work with too. Particularly poignant are some lines between the Woolf's.
Leonard: In your novel. Why does somebody have to die?' Virginia: So that others will value life more. It is necessary for contrast.'
But for all the good things about it, The Hours' does not reach the level of emotional power it aspires to. Paradoxically it feels both overcharged and too slow, because we are hit by too much of the same things. The Hours' is nearly all painfully shallow conversation or emotional turmoil there are hardly any light moments to catch your breath or build up the tension for the next big scene. Watching it is like listening to a symphony that is all crescendos no matter how moving they are they feel flat after a while.
7/10
The film focuses on three women living parallel lives in different times and places during the last eighty years. In the 1920s Virginia Woolf (an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman) is writing her novel Mrs Dalloway', which is about a hostess who is hiding how empty she feels behind a mask of happiness, much like 1950s housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) and modern-day socialite Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep). All are locked into suffocating relationships with men who do not understand them, except for Clarissas ex-lover, the dying poet Richard Brown (Ed Harris), who understands all too well. There are other themes running through the womens' lives: emotional repression, bisexuality, parenthood and above all suicide. Director Stephen Daldry does a good job of visually showing how the women echo each other they look into mirrors, depressed at what they see there, flowers are arranged and moved, food is created and destroyed. A strong image is that of eggs being broken, for the women lead eggshell lives strong on the surface but fragile and liable to break into shards. Other images also linger, as this is a very well shot film: a woman walking into a river, the terrible arid neatness of Laura's house, a child's judging eyes, water flooding a hotel room.
Daldry also draws out nuanced and powerful performances from his actors, though you would expect them from such a talented cast. As well as Harris and the three leads it also includes John C. Reilly, who seems to be in every good film out at the moment, Toni Collette, Miranda Richardson and Stephen Dillane in a complex, touching role as Woolf's husband Leonard. The actors are given a good script to work with too. Particularly poignant are some lines between the Woolf's.
Leonard: In your novel. Why does somebody have to die?' Virginia: So that others will value life more. It is necessary for contrast.'
But for all the good things about it, The Hours' does not reach the level of emotional power it aspires to. Paradoxically it feels both overcharged and too slow, because we are hit by too much of the same things. The Hours' is nearly all painfully shallow conversation or emotional turmoil there are hardly any light moments to catch your breath or build up the tension for the next big scene. Watching it is like listening to a symphony that is all crescendos no matter how moving they are they feel flat after a while.
7/10
