a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Stephen Daldry’s The Hours suffers from misleading ideas about love, life, and death, some of which stem from its source novel by Michael Cunningham. But it seamlessly sews together three complicated and emotionally demanding storylines. And like the best poetry, it gives us room to explore ideas and issues instead of narrowing itself to simple moral lessons.
David Hare’s script guides us gracefully along three plot strands at once. We see someone put down a vase of flowers in Story 1, and another pair of hands releases another vase of flowers in Story 2… and we’re off. It’s a difficult trick; I’ve seen it awkwardly connect scenes in a hundred other films, but here it seems effortless.
The spectacular cast bring complex characters to live in vivid characterizations. Nicole Kidman transforms herself into a stormy Virginia Woolf; you can’t take your eyes off of her. Julianne Moore’s work as Laura Brown is even more heartbreaking and complex than her lead role in Far From Heaven. And Meryl Streep has struck gold in her performance as Clarissa.
But the movie belongs every bit as much to the supporting cast, who make the most of every moment. Toni Collette is frighteningly effective as a seemingly perfect housewife. Jeff Daniels steals the scenes he shares with Meryl Streep… who knew it could be done? John C. Reilly is once again a thick-headed husband with a heart of gold, and his blindness is both frightening and sad. Ed Harris plays a dying man with a ferocity that makes him a frontrunner for the Oscar in my estimation. (Of course, Oscar rarely ever agrees with me.) Jack Rovello joins a long list of new and impressive child actors; his eyes are so full of questions and sadness that he’s like the open wound at the heart of the film… we ache to look at him. And let’s not forget vivid turns by Stephen Dillane, Miranda Richardson, Allison Janney and Claire Danes as well.
The film is energetic and alive in spite of its sombre subjects. And ultimately, its theme … which never becomes preachy … is that we should be careful not to let our lives become tombs for the living, but that we should follow the light of passion and find life.
I agree with that.
But I am uncomfortable with the film’s suggestions about how to find that susatining, satisfying life.
THE STORIES
Virginia Woolf’s life was a tempest of intellectual challenges, voices in her head, deep love and trouble with her husband Leonard, and brilliant writing. She eventually killed herself — an episode that opens this film — to escape from madness and to release her husband from the trials of dealing with her. She knew she was ruining his life by staying, and that she was ruining his life by killing herself, but she must have figured that suicide would at least bring the number of suffering people down from two to one.
This decision can be understood, even if one does not agree with it. And Virginia’s story, alongside the other two stories, are just that… stories of women who earn my deepest sympathy, but whose decisions break my heart.
[It is well worth noting that the Virginia Woolf in the film is, according to experts, a misrepresentation, and perhaps even a near-blasphemous insult to the real woman. Read this commentary for one of these arguments.]
If Virginia is Plot Number One, then Laura Brown is Plot Number Two. Laura’s story takes place in the early 1950s, where she is a wife and mother who is expecting another baby. Laura did not want to be a housewife. And now that she is one, she still wants to be something else. This, like so many films, wants us to pity the wife without asking us to think about the fact that somewhere along the line she chose this. But we have all made commitments that we have regretted, so surely we feel sympathy for Laura in her confinement. The typical wife/mother role just doesn’t fit her. Perhaps she thought it would eventually “take” but never did. To make matters worse, she is struggling with a homosexual attraction to a woman who is everything that Laura feels incapable of becoming. That makes the tension worse.
Thus, as Laura reads Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway, she relates to Woolf’s sense of desperation, alienation, and hopelessness. Suicide looks appealing. Laura looks like she’s going to kill herself, but instead she commits a lesser crime. Her decision is still self-centered, and the movie should have done more to illustrate the consequences of her actions on the rest of her family. But she does not end up triumphant… she ends up a sad question that knows no answer. She has the satisfaction of having finally acted on her own will, but her action was self-serving, not sacrificial or caring, and thus she must live with the consequences.
Plot Number Three takes place in the present day. Clarissa is a woman who is working overtime to take care of a dying artist named Richard. Richard, suffering from AIDs, once had a brief love affair with Clarissa, the greatest happiness that either of them ever knew. Now they have moved on, both into homosexual relationships. They yearn for the kind of happiness they knew together, but that nostalgia cripples them, keeps them from moving on and growing.
Clarissa’s hard work helping the often cantankerous Richard appears to be an act of love and caring. And it is, to some extent. But it is not entirely honorable. Clarissa keeps serving Richard partly because she can still sense a trace of that past happiness, like a trace of perfume after someone has left the room. She can’t bear to let it go away entirely. So far as that goes, she is not out of selfless love but out of need… a need that Richard cannot meet.
This serves to underline the film’s main theme: Happiness is fleeting and based on temporary circumstances. So how can we live when it keeps slipping through our fingers? The movie has no answer.
THE PROBLEM
The Hours ends on an optimistic note, showing us one character who has escaped her personal prison. But escape from one unhappiness does not mean she has ended up in a better place than she began. She’s ready to fall into another prison, another disappointment. For all we know she’ll end up as desperate as Virginia Woolf, or as reckless as Laura Brown.
None of these characters have based their happiness on any foundation stronger than human relationships. They have placed their security in unstable relationships. Thus they are regularly rocked. They want to be happy, and they believe that happiness is the best they can hope for. So they pursue it in heterosexual relationships. When those fail, they move on to homosexual relationships. Those too will fail, even though Cunningham’s story seems to suggest they won’t.
(The Hours is also flawed in that: It joins many recent films in portraying homosexual love as far deeper, more complex, and more rewarding than heterosexual love. This strikes me as reverse discrimination, the very intolerance that so offends homosexuals. To generalize in such a way is ignorant and offensive.)
These characters may find temporary happiness, but the missing piece is joy. Who in this film knows joy? No one. Joy, that unshakeable and sustaining power that comes from the experience of unconditional love. This film has no picture of unconditional love. If anything, the film comes too close to saying that unconditional love is just slavery and self-abasement.
We all want unconditional love. We want to be appreciated, enjoyed, and free to be ourselves. We want to be loved in spite of our flaws. And yet we do not hold ourselves to the same standard. We think that by breaking our promises, by being free to abandon other human beings, we can find joy. It won’t happen. The Hours is very meaningful in that it shows us how burdensome life becomes without the knowledge and the practice of unconditional love.
In spite of these flaws, Cunningham’s story is a beautiful poem, the travelogue of a a sad traveler who is lost and cannot find his way home. We have all been lost like that, from time to time, so we can feel deep compassion for these women.
The most striking example of integrity in this cast of broken characters is Leonard. He would have done anything for Virginia, but she rejected his sacrifice of love and killed herself. One by one, they all turn away from the possibility of unconditional love. At one point, Virginia says, “Someone has to die so the rest of us can value life more.” Guess what, Virginia? Someone has. It didn’t have to be you.
What a heartbreaking, troubling, and beautiful film.