Movie Review: The Hours - 2003 Academy Awards Nominee

by JR Wright

There are moments that touch us in such a way, that their very impact is not fully realized until a day or so later. They linger in our memories and resurface when we are alone in our cars, before we turn out the light to go to sleep, walking down the street by ourselves. This is the very essence of director Stephen Daldry's beautiful and haunting movie "The Hours," a cornucopia of fine acting, interwoven story lines, and time frames.

There was much fuss made over the choice of the beautiful actress Nicole Kidman's decision to wear a prosthetic nose, to portray the doomed author Virginia Woolf. Within two minutes of watching her walk and fret about, all hesitations are abandoned and as an audience member you are swept into these stories, which while relatively simply, encompass huge issues. The director begins the film with a dizzying collage of the three different time frames that the movie is set in, cutting back and forth between Virginia Woolf (Ms. Kidman), the 1950's housewife Laura Brown (the amazingly subtle Julianne Moore), and a modern day book editor Clarissa Vaughn (the perfectly played Meryl Streep).

The movie is about finding our brilliance, and the biggest struggle that one could ever face, which is to be true to one's self. It is this struggle that ties all three of these women together. Virginia Woolf was ahead of her time, and the movies captures the stage in her life when she was beginning work on her most famous novel Mrs. Dalloway. This is also the point in her life, when she had been relocated to the country with her husband, where she might find peace of mind after a series of mental breakdowns. Unfortunately her battle to regain her sanity is a losing battle, and because she is so brilliant, she knows it. Ms. Kidman charges through her scenes with a ferocity and honesty that is heartbreaking. Her performance is nothing short of brilliant and is by far one of the best performance I have seen in recent memory. Her war with herself is apparent and beautiful to watch. While she may be going mad, she profess that she herself knows what is best for her, and it is certainly a hard thing to argue with.

Some 30 years later the book "Mrs. Dalloway" is picked up by a miserable 1950's house wife, Laura Brown. It is in the reading of the book that it occurs to her that she may have created a life for herself that she was not necessarily looking for, and now may be stuck with. Ms. Moore plays most of her scene with an adorable and heartbreaking young boy (Jack Rovello). Brown has a sense that there is more to herself then what she is presented with, and trepidatiously explores her options, including a memorable scene with the extraordinary Toni Collette, as her neighbor. She too is tortured, and is not necessarily sure why, but will seemingly stop at nothing to figure it out.

The most recent storyline centers around Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) who, like Mrs. Dalloway in the book, is giving a party for a dear friend Richard (Ed Harris) who is dying of AIDS. Ms. Streep's character is the one who seems to have been most true to herself. She has chosen a same sex lover (Allison Janney), had a daughter my artificial insemination Julia (Claire Danes), and seems to surround her with her own choices. Her anguish comes from being the girl who has tried her whole life to do everything the way it should be done, and still ends up with a void. What makes this performance so incredible is that you can tell that this character has worked so hard to make her choices her own, and yet is still plagues by uncertainties about these decisions.

This is an unbelievably moving film, and a terribly deceitful one as well. There is a lot of sadness in the hours, but at the end you feel transported. This film gives hope to the hopeless and understanding to the confused, and comfort to the lonely. The ensemble is awesome in the sense that it inspires a sense of awe. There is not a weak link in the cast. For all these reasons and more, I highly recommend going to see this film.