The Hours

"A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day, her whole life."

The Hours remain one of my eternally favourite movies. It is a 2002 Academy Award-winning film and Best Picture nominee about three women of different generations and times whose lives are interconnected by Virginia Woolf's novel, Mrs Dalloway. All the action takes place within the span of one day. Nicole Kidman is in one of her elements in this movie.

Nicole Kidman is writing a book, Julianne Moore is reading the book, Meryl Streep is the book - all three favourites of mine and women superweights in the business, supported by a perfect ensemble of characters: Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, John C. Reilly, Stephen Dillane, and Miranda Richardson.

The movie, based on a Pulitzer prize winning novel, contains three stories which touch upon each other but rarely actually connect, the common thread being English author Virginia Woolf [Kidman] and her novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Woolf was a brilliant writer who suffered from severe mental illness. She committed suicide in 1941 when she finally could no longer cope with her disease. There is then the story of Laura Brown [Moore], set in 1951, in which the character, who is reading Woolf's book, toys with the idea of suicide. The last story revolves around Clarissa Vaughn [Streep]. Set in present day, it is about her relationship with her ex-lover [Ed Harris], who is dying from AIDS and whose only out seems to be to kill himself. On the surface, all this dallying with suicide may seem grim and depressing, the movie is actually life-affirming but is not meant for mass consumption.

This film moves superbly from one place in time - from one character's growing angst and sense of misgiving - to another, until at last the three separate stories are tied together in astonishing and remarkable fashion. If indeed there is a stream of super-consciousness that literally and figuratively transcends space and time, then such a force is manifested in The Hours, a powerful, gripping examination of three lives over the course of one eventful day.

The Hours is about many things: the magical, transcendent connection between writer and reader; struggling with illness, whether mental or physical; making choices in one's life; etc. The chronologically separate stories are skillfully and seamlessly woven together. The film presents a complex tapestry of human relationships and emotions. It offers no easy answers, but rather challenges the viewer. Yet in the end it is an emotionally full and satisfying journey.

The following quotation is taken from the touching and excruciating last scene while Woolf drowns herself. She left this last note to her husband Leonard - who found her too late, but in that lateness, perhaps liberated her.

"Dear Leonard:
To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is.
At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away.
Leonard, always the years between us, always the years.
Always the love.
Always the hours."