The film: THE HOURS (2002)

 

"The Hours", by Stephen Daldry’s (director of the successful film Billy Elliot), score by Phillip Glass, is based on a 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham which was inspired by Virginia Wolf's 1925 novel "Mrs. Dalloway." It tracks three women in three time periods over the course of a single day. Virginia Wolf (Nicole Kidman) is beginning work on "Mrs. Dalloway" in 1925; a young wife in the 1950s, Laura Brown,  (Julianne Moore) is reading the novel and coming to grips with her own problems; and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is a modern-day version of the Mrs. Dalloway character as she plans a party for Richard, her friend and former lover.
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Summary of the film:

 

There are three stories going on in The Hours about three different women during three different decades, but all are held together by the single day they encompass. They are also haunted by the specter of Virginia Woolf, maybe the most fascinating writer of the 20th century, and consumed with the passions and themes of her literary work.

 

In one story a 50’s California housewife (Moore) struggles with making a birthday cake for her easy-going husband. In another, a modern-day lesbian and mother (Streep) puts the finishing touches on a party planned for a dying friend – and ex-lover (Ed Harris) – on the day of his receiving a prestigious award. In the third, Ms. Woolf (Kidman) herself begins writing her groundbreaking work Mrs. Dalloway while having to deal with her own neuroses.

 

Laura Brown (Moore) is suffocating in her 1951 suburban life. Reading Mrs. Dalloway, she is struck by how the heroine’s life seems to mirror the emptiness of her own. Her husband Joe, an agreeably enough oaf (played by John C. Reilly), treats her almost as an after thought; the home and children she’s provided with feel like a reward for service rendered during WWII.

 

He doesn’t notice his wife’s quiet torment and depression, but their young son Ritchie (Jack Rovello) does. While helping his mother prepare for his father’s birthday, the young boy’s concern for his mother is palpable, Ritchie’s face contorted between looks of despair and helplessness. When Laura leaves her son with a friend for the afternoon, Ritchie knows something is wrong, crying desperately for his mother to stay with him and not descend into darkness.

 

Clarissa Vaughn’s (Streep) problems aren’t about loneliness. The only person holding her back from living life is herself. The busy New York editor seems to have it all: a spacious condo, a loving girlfriend of ten years (Allison Janney) and an artificially inseminated college-age daughter (Claire Danes) who thinks the world of her. And yet she’s torn by regret, not knowing if this life she’s chosen is the one that best suited her.

 

It is in preparations for a party in honour of her former lover and friend Richard (Harris) that she finds herself starting to whither into despair and ennui. An acclaimed poet, Richard is dying of AIDS and a life now made up of good and bad days seems to be quickly tilting towards a win by the latter. He toys and flirts with Clarissa, calling her "Mrs. Dalloway" for the way she is living her life and taking care of those around her but forgetting to seek out a place of her own.

 

But it is Ms. Woolf herself who sees the tragic way life can unfold. Over the course of the day she starts work on what is to be a novel that will shatter all literary conventions. On the way she finds herself steeped in the pain and conflict she continually battles on a day-by-day basis. A visit by her sister Vanessa Bell (Miranda Richardson) and her children make it crystal clear that a normal life is not in the cards, but instead of letting that tear her apart Woolf just adds it to the litany of things against her choosing to fight on and not give in.

 

Nestled in the country to be away from the bustle of London as to battle the moments of insanity that consume her, Woolf realizes that the quiet life will surely kill her faster than a life of energy and action that the city provides. Her husband Leonard (Richard Dillane) – he’s the one leading the life of painful sacrifice, the feminine life, here – doesn’t want her to return to the city. He knows that the voices and ghosts that plagued his wife once before can not help but to return if she goes back. But Virginia is resolute. “You cannot find peace by avoiding life,” she tells her worried husband, and he knows at that moment London is where they must return to even if it means his wife’s own sanity might be threatened.

 

 

 

The score [colonna sonora] by Phillip Glass is a basic aspect of the film.

Here is part of a chat transcript with Michael Cunningham (author of the novel) on this topic:


Michael Cunningham: The score is the most controversial aspect of the movie. As someone who loves it, I think the people who don't like it don't like it because it's not the kind of soundtrack we're accustomed to hearing in a movie. It's more muscular and in-your-face. It actually relates to the movie the way a heightened language does in a novel. It's part of the novel and separate from it, the way Faulkner's or Garcia-Marquez's voice has a life of its own. Glass's music is not meant as background, and it's not cued to the emotional highs of the movie. A lot of those moments take place in silence. The music isn't there to tell us how to feel at the moment. It doesn't swell during the most dramatic scenes. I think people aren't accustomed to that. People who don't like the score, I suspect, are looking for a more old-fashioned score that treats the viewer as slow and gives cues as to how to react emotionally.

 

 

Michael Cunningham, The Hours (1998)

 

The novel begins with a reconstruction of Virginia Woolf's 1941 suicide by drowning. What follows is an exploration of despair and tenacity, of the reasons that some people choose not to continue living, and of the things that enable others to go on.

 

In The Hours (1998), Michael Cunningham pays tribute to Virginia Woolf in a re-imagining of Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Woolf’s novel follows Clarissa Dalloway on a June day in London, as she prepares for a party she is giving that evening. With its emphasis on plumbing the depths of characters' inner lives, Mrs. Dalloway is characteristic of Woolf’s oeuvre. Her experimental prose, a combination of stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and lyrical language, strives to capture what she referred to as moments of being, fleeting moments of joy, where even the smallest of gestures effect the most enduring impressions. As Clarissa recalls such past moments, considering her relationships with men and with women, the novel unfolds larger themes, exploring the nature of creativity, of identity and sanity, of loss, of time, and of the choices we make. As these themes overlap, so do people’s lives. Woolf suggests we are tethered like a web, with delicacy, transparency, and resilience.

Cunningham spins similar webs among his characters; not only do their lives overlap within the novel’s framework, but outside of it, as well, intersecting with the lives of their literary predecessors. It’s a marvellous feat, really, and one Cunningham achieves by borrowing and transforming Woolf’s characters, by mimicking Woolf’s linguistic techniques (such as uniting scenes and themes through recurring images and language), and by similarly applying a poet’s attention to language, to how sounds affect and effect meaning. Even his title, The Hours, borrows from Woolf, as it was her working title for Mrs. Dalloway.

The opening of The Hours makes clear Cunningham’s intentions. After an epilogue visualizing Woolf’s suicide, The Hours begins with Clarissa Vaughn (dubbed Mrs. Dalloway by her friend and former lover), an editor in modern day New York City, thinking, “There are still the flowers to buy.” From here, Cunningham proceeds in the next two chapters to do what he does throughout the novel, to move seamlessly back and forth in time among the stories of three women, Clarissa Vaughn, Woolf herself, and Laura Brown, a disaffected 1950’s mother and wife, escaping from everyday demands in the pages of Woolf’s novel. All three women are introduced with the flower imagery, a central motif associated with the theme of creativity. Chapter two presents Virginia Woolf in the process of refining the first line of her novel: “Mrs. Dalloway said something (what?), and got the flowers herself.” Correspondingly, chapter three introduces Laura Brown reading the first line of Mrs. Dalloway. The second paragraphs of each of these three introductory chapters stylistically and thematically reinforce the parallel structure. Chapter one:”It is New York City. It is the end of the twentieth century.” Chapter two: It is a suburb of London. It is 1923.” Chapter three: “It is Los Angeles. It is 1949.” Not surprisingly, the setting for these three chapters is a day in June.

Cunningham’s characters, aside from his fictionalized Woolf, are amalgamations of those found in Mrs. Dalloway, and he uses them similarly to explore the same themes present in Woolf’s novel. Many critics, especially Woolf scholars, find fault with Cunningham’s appropriation of Woolf’s voice, arguing that by highlighting Woolf’s suicide and depression, he presents a limited portrait of this multifaceted, talented woman. However, Woolf struggled. She struggled with depression. She struggled to understand society devastated by war. And she sought to develop an artistic voice articulating the struggles particular to a female creative vision. Cunningham’s multi-textured work explores how Woolf’s voice resonates through time, spinning a web across generations and becoming part of others’ moments of being, as they, too, struggle.

 

With an inventive and satisfying conclusion, The Hours merges the Clarissa Vaughn, Laura Brown, and Virginia Woolf narratives. Whereas Woolf’s novel ends with Clarissa’s identity being articulated by a male voice (“For there she was”), Cunningham (a male voice) gives that identity back to Clarissa (“And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway…”). With lyrical language (delicacy), borrowed plot (transparency), and affirmation (resilience), The Hours manifests Cunningham’s respect and admiration for Woolf’s craft, ideology, and imagination.

A CHAT TRANSCRIPT WITH MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

Seattle, Washington: What does your book say about survival? The two characters who survive in the book are Clarissa and Mrs. Brown, two women who seem almost impervious to the world around them.

Michael Cunningham: I don't think Mrs. Brown is in any way impervious to the world around her. I think she is, if anything, too aware of the world around her. She can't just fake it as many people do. What I hope the book says about survival is that it's possible. One of the things I love most about Virginia Wolff is the fact that she suffered from profound depressions. It's difficult anyone better acquainted with what's difficult, dangerous and impossible about living in the world, and at the same time I don't know any other writer who wrote more fully and compellingly and convincingly about the simple joy of being alive, about the pure miracle of living through a day on earth.

Virginia Woolf left behind a body of work that to me is a huge testament to a hope, a love of the world, that can survive the worst that can happen to us, which is the only hope I trust.

menlo park, ca: In the hours, why did Laura Brown leave her family? Was she depressed or was she a lesbian?

Michael Cunningham: Neither one! Yes, she was depressed, yes her sexuality was complicated, and had lesbianism in it, though she also loved her husband. She left her family because she had let herself be led into a life that was wrong for her, into a life she could not live. She did what she felt she had to do. One of the things that's been gratifying to me about people's reactions to the book and the movie is the number of people, mostly women, who've come up to me to say thank you for writing that character, by which I think they mean thank you for breaking one of the last taboos and writing about a woman who's not evil, who can't be dismissed as merely depressed or a lesbian, who leaves her children. It's something we refuse to allow women. I insist on writing in a world in which anything we do can be forgiven if it's seen in its context.