Such a frustrating disappointment

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

image1.jpeg"THE HOURS" ~ The story of how the novel "Mrs. Dalloway" affects three generations of women, all of whom, in one way or another, have had to deal with suicide in their lives. Misdirected and spewed forth for Paramount by a director named Stephen Daldry this extremely overrated motionless motion picture was viewed at the 2003 Berlin film festival. The morning press screening of "The Hours" (with Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf) in the Big Hall helped me catch up on some sleep lost the night before. Crashingly expensive BORE and the Kidman role could have been pulled off by any halfway decent high-school actress. Not that Nicole was bad, just that the role is zilch – Anybody can play a zombie with a false nose. But the other parts of the film (it's a three part movie) were even worse. The Ed Harris/Meryl Streep segment could have been excised totally without missing a beat. Who wants to watch Ed Harris dying of leprosy on screen as they claim it's really AIDS, and who cares if he left Streep years before for a gay boyfriend? – and now she's living in a lezzy affaire with another woman whom she kisses repeatedly on the mouth.The only one of the three parallel stories that held my interest at all was the LA segment with Julianne Moore, but only because of her – because for my money Moore is the best actress in Hollywood –the new Bette Davis! But the overall story line with three extremely dull people building their private lives around the depressing suicide centered Woolf novel "Mrs. Dalloway" was one long embarrassing bore straining painfully for meaning while falling flat on its face. For me the film was over when Kidman (as Virginia Woolf) went under without so much as a blug-blug in the first three minutes of the pre-titles sequence where she commits suicide by calmly walking into a local lake. This picture should have jumped into the lake before it was released. The fact that it swept up multiple Oscars including a Best Actress for Ms.. Kidman he following February is proof positive of the meaningless of the annual Let's all pat ourselves on the back Ritual known as The Academy Awards. I cannot help but agree with the assessment of another IMDb reviewer who called it the Usual Feminist Garbage and said: "This was so awful it's a shoo-in for Best Picture". Amen.Bottom Line: Crashingly Expensive Bore with a bashingly bad nose-job

Where do you start with a convoluted work like 'The Hours'?. The Novelist Michael Cunningham tends to infuse his own homosexual view of relationships into his characters and the reader. TIME magazine's Richard Schickel's perceptive review of this film version leans toward being the most accurate, he summed it up as being...'Agenda Driven'. David Hare's jigsaw like screenplay adaption makes excellent use of cinematic creativity to juxtapose the inter-related time shifts. It's via this technique we're best able to see director, writer and photographer working so perfectly together.David Hare is no stranger to the theme of suicide. His own written and directed (sadly, rarely screened) 1985 classic 'Whetherby' is testimony to his sensitivity and skill with this subject. As for the variety of interconnected characters, there's an uncomfortable ambiguity that tends to prevent the viewer fully connecting with them. Firstly, we have Julianne More's Laura as a classic example: What earlier goals had this woman set for her life before marriage?. She has what billions of less fortunate women the world over would gladly trade places for - a comfortable home, caring husband, an adoring 6 yr old son (marvelously played by young Jack Rovello), a daughter on the way, clothes, car and money to spend. The only suggestion the writers offer for her intense suicidal tendencies comes during a visit by Kitty (Toni Collette) her female neighbor - Laura plants a passionate kiss square on the mouth of this very surprised woman - could Laura have been a lesbian all along? - Kitty, who had just finished telling Laura that she feels like a failure because of her inability to conceive, then looks up all dewy eyed at Laura and says 'your such a warm woman'...surprise!, could it be that all these years Laura's neighbor may also have been a lesbian?. Perhaps we should look further.... A similar excuse is drawn up for Meryl Streep's Clarissa. She's in a lesbian partnership but cannot let go of strong feelings she holds for an old relationship she had with Richard (Richard is the homosexual son of our above mentioned Laura and she had abandoned him years earlier!). This brings to question some theories on same sex partnering...Is Richard really a homosexual or is he simply avoiding a serious relationship with Clarissa (the woman he constantly claims to love), could Richard's indecision be out of fear that Clarissa might also abandon him as his mother did?. Is Clarissa in fact a true biological lesbian?. None of these issues are convincingly made clear.How many may choose homosexual relationships, not for biological reasons, but from fear or misunderstandings?. These choices have the potential to introduce serious dilemmas as people mature into deeper understandings of themselves. Here, we witness their decisions bring deadly consequences for all involved. Even Richard's male lover admits to Clarissa that he never felt freer than the day he left him!. So, what does poor Richard get out of all this? - deadly AIDs and yet more suicide! What about the unfortunate Virginia Woolf? (well played by an unrecognizable Nicole Kidman). If we look back over Woolf's life, she has tragically admitted she and her sister were abused by their half brothers ~ She was totally devastated by the death of her parents and brother ~ She also had a lesbian dalliance that soon petered out ~ In the film, Virginia goes on to admit the only time she ever felt fulfilled and at her happiest - was in her relationship with her beloved husband. Yet again, the novelist rather bizarrely offers up suggestions that a lesbian relationship might still be her possible savior. Somehow this all has a tendency to look and feel like over simplistic agenda based reasoning than genuine relationship philosophy.With stylish direction by Stephen Daldry ~ marvelous editing by Peter Boyle (AKF '92's neglected 'Into the West') ~ dressed to the hilt with so many stunning performances (too difficult to say whose best) ~ then add Irish born director of photography Seamus McGarvey (known for the odd 'Harry Dean Stanton Partly Fiction') providing dazzling images ~ now wrap it all up in Philip Glass's haunting, insistently minimalist music score. What you have could be one of the most compelling movies you just may find all too difficult to watch again. The films surprising success could be attributed to all the above elements but, there have been many other powerful, introspectively themed movies that were unfairly neglected, why?. The Hours could prove rewarding for those who can take the depressing intensity....for others, the seconds, minutes and hours may seem more like weeks.

A bravura piece of screen writing by David Hare is the foundation on which this remarkable cinematic edifice is built. It is peopled by actors of the highest quality. Several of its images are truly haunting. Many of its scenes are tremendously powerful.The story concerns lives in different decades linked by Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. It's essentially a literary idea, based as it is on a book by Michael Cunningham. But Hare, director Stephen Daldry and their colleagues turn it into a poetic study of life and death. It is given urgency and unity by Philip Glass's score.The Hours aims high and mostly achieves what it sets out to do, but there are, perhaps inevitably, a couple of fumbles. A climactic scene between two of its leading actors is presented in a series of ever tighter close-ups, which ends up giving the impression that the characters might not be in the same room. If that was the idea, it was a mistake - we really need to feel them communicating, sharing the space. Also, one of the story strands feels much more contrived than the others, shoe-horned in to make it all work: this is, I'm pretty sure, a problem in the source material which the movie couldn't avoid inheriting.In the final analysis, these are quibbles. To embark on a project as ambitiously multi-layered as this in a commercial movie, and then to realise it as fully as The Hours does, is quite an achievement. Everyone connected with it should be very proud.

This movie, and the timing in which it came out, were just right to make an impact on my life. I was 22 when this was released and came out on VHS. I literally wore out the VHS tape because I watched it so often.I distinctly remember my gut reactions to this movie - especially to Clarissa's story line at the end. I felt that this movie was a truly interesting look at depression. It kind of makes you feel like: "snap out of it" at first. You get 3 different glances at three different female lives and at the beginning of the film it looks like all of them have pretty nice lives. It is also starkly obvious that none of them are happy in their "nice lives." This interests me particularly because the devastation is often pushed on to the depressed by those around them. It is very easy to think, or to say to them: "you have a good life. why can't you be happy?" The movie does not really address this for us. It does not tell us why they cannot be happy and I believe that is because each of these women wonder that a bit themselves - even to the extent of feeling some guilt about it. As each story unfolds it becomes obvious that their happiness or unhappiness is out of their control. Virginia has obviously battled her demons for most of her life and both her and her loved ones are close to the end of what they can bear. The first thing we see is Virginia's suicide, so you are warned very early that this movie is not going to be a gentle ride.Laura Brown was the most frustrating character to me personally. You can tell from the first glance of her that she's depressed. Her poor husband and child that both try so hard to connect with her but just cannot... and I felt so deeply for her little boy. It is obvious he knows something is wrong but also that he cannot fix it for her. It's a hard situation to watch. It's so important, though. Having a wonderful husband, children, a nice home... none of these things guarantee happiness.Clarissa is the character I sympathize with. She is longing for days past and is weighed down by her past - the things she she wishes she could return to and the opportunities she feels she missed. What I see as the watcher, though, is that maybe her expectations for herself and her life were just a little too high. I think this is an emotional place where many women find themselves.Here's my major spoiler - just a warning.The scene in which Richard commits suicide is so perfectly done. Meryl Streep's expression will stay with me forever. My husband accidentally sat down for the last half of of this movie a few days ago and I warned him: the end get rough. He just looked at me like that was silly. But when the end came, he was speechless. lol Many movies that touch on depression almost make my depression worse but this movie never has. I feel amazingly understood by the way this movie was handled.End game, it is a very well done movie. It's probably not the type of movie you want to show at a party, and I wouldn't say it's a really relaxing watch, but if you want to understand depression or want to feel that someone understands yours, hopefully this movie will help you too.