The Hours was directed by Stephen Daldry in 2002, and is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham. It tells the story of three different women who are connected by Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is writing the book in England during the 1920s, while struggling with mental illness; Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) is a housewife reading it during the 1950s in Los Angeles, while dealing with severe depression; and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) embodies the novel's main character, Clarissa Dalloway, in contemporary New York.
The Hours displays a particularly well crafted narrative, and features great performances by the three leading actresses, as well as by a supporting cast including Ed Harris, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Dillane, Miranda Richardson, and John C. Reilly. The events portrayed in the story are devastating, but at the same time it seems to me that the film evokes a touching sense of love for life through the darkness. The following quote is from a powerful scene at Richmond railway station; its narrative is so coherent that it may actually be seen as a short film.
The Hours displays a particularly well crafted narrative, and features great performances by the three leading actresses, as well as by a supporting cast including Ed Harris, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Dillane, Miranda Richardson, and John C. Reilly. The events portrayed in the story are devastating, but at the same time it seems to me that the film evokes a touching sense of love for life through the darkness. The following quote is from a powerful scene at Richmond railway station; its narrative is so coherent that it may actually be seen as a short film.
VIRGINIA WOOLF: If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right, it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs but the violent jolt of the capital, that is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity.
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