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The Hours
Do you like to wallow in misery?
2002
Director: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore
If you want to enhance your misery.
THE SETUP:
Three depressive women and their depressed circle of friends feel bad in three time periods.
DISCUSSION:
I pretty much hate this movie. It's overbaked, heavy and overblown when it could have been light and lyrical. All the suffering is cranked up to 11, to the point where one starts to resent the film as being manipulative and loaded. There is so much unbridled misery happening here that it's hard not to turn against the film altogether [as I did].
While the film makes clearer some of the connections in the novel, it also manages to squander the most moving sequences. One of my favorite scenes in the novel is when Virginia Woolf buys a train ticket to London, intending just to be there for an hour or two, then to return. When her husband finds her at the station, it is not the nagging, haraguing scene we have here, but a scene that expresses his concern and the tender nature of her relationship, and when she is persuaded to return, unused ticket in her pocket, it is very sweet and moving. Well, that ticket is not here, wacky old Virginia just went to the station for no reason, and her husband shows up to scream at her.
The other scene was the connection between the Julianne Moore character and the Meryl Streep character that is revealed at the end. This was quite a moving surprise in the novel. Here it is revealed before the final scene, which robs it of its power. On the other hand, the speechifying in the final scene (that was added for the movie) was a good choice, to make clear what happened and draw the themes together.
One thing that came across neither in the novel or the film is WHAT IS JULIANNE MOORE SO FUCKING DEPRESSED ABOUT? She’s got an adorable kid and a decent house, so maybe her husband’s a schlub and she doesn’t have enough time to read, but you know, people are DYING elsewhere in the world. I didn’t like the whiny tendentiousness of the film assuming that we would sympathize with her because she feels constrained into making the perfect cake. Sounds like HER issue, to me. The film doesn’t take [or allow] any critical distance on her [or any of the characters], you just have to buy into the worldview that having a nice suburban existence is an inhuman torture that should not be visited upon a dog. The movie omitted the section where someone held a gun to her head and forced her to get married. No, she, and the movie, would prefer to whine.
Yeah, yeah, Nicole Kidman, yeah, yeah. But the thing that really struck me about this film is how terrific Toni Collette is. I've always thought she was great, but during her ONE scene here there is such excitement and electricity, she's just so good. One both wants to see more of her, and also to keep her a secret. Go Toni!
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you want to wallow in how very difficult it is to be a woman.
RELATED MOVIES:
MAGNOLIA is also all about depressive characters having the most miserable day of their miserable existences and just soaking in the misery of it all. Because it’s all so very meaningful.
