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
Laura Brown (
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
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
The score [colonna
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
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
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.
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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
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.
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.