merelyaninnuendo
The HoursA smart intake on a parallel plotline that unfortunately loses its way down the road as it ages on screen resulting onto scattered thoughts that may be poetic but is surely redundant by then. David Hare's screenplay isn't that smart as it looks which then makes it disappointing as it never manages to come out from the self created loop. Stephen Daldry has done a marvelous work on executing this eerie world that it surpasses its scripts potential. Its strength obviously lies on performance due to such a big and brilliant cast like Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, John C. Riley and Allison Janey. The Hours is surely an important feature as it raises some thought provoking questions and satisfactorily proves its point but the question it begs the most is, is it entertaining or not.
alexdeleonfilm
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
krocheav
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.
