The Hours
by Stephen Daldry
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DVD details
Actor: Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Miranda Richardson, Nicole Kidman, Stephen DillaneDirector: Stephen Daldry
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
Producer: Ian MacNeil
Producer: Marieke Spencer
Producer: Mark Huffam
Producer: Michael Alden
Producer: Robert Fox
Writer: David Hare
Writer: Michael Cunningham
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.0; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.0
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 114 minutes
Published: 2003-06-01
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-24
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Paramount
DVD Reviews of The Hours
DVD Review: * * * 1/2 Three stories, not quite alike in dignity
Summary: 3 Stars
When I first saw this film I was quite swept away by the parallel storylines, the intricate intercutting and the whole idea for the story. With some distance, I still am impressed by these things, but I also see big flaws, particularly with the story set in 2001.
This film made me think of MTV, of all things. For the most part I've decried the MTV effect on the editing of Hollywood films. Movies today don't sit still for more than a few seconds. They jump, they cut, they flash. The editing is razzle-dazzle, to draw attention to itself. (This is true of television, too--CSI, Lost, etc.) All this has effected--and generally not for the good, I feel--the type of subject matter one gets and the handling of subject matter on film. My heart is more often back in the 70s, when editing was slower, more subservient to the story. (One of the reason editing is more flashy today is because it's simply easier to do, so editors can't resist the temptation; to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.)
But here's a film that's used changes in editing technique and technology for maximum advantage. The Hours really pushes our time perspectives: it doesn't just tell two parallel stories gradually, as Godfather II (1974) did; it doesn't flip scenes in time and space, as Plenty (1985) or The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1987) did; it doesn't tell a story backwards the way Memento (2000) did. The Hours cross-cuts three stories in rapid succession, to the point that some characters end sentences and actions that other characters began in different points of time and space. Oddly, rather than being confusing, this technique adds clarity. This is the first film I've ever seen that I feel *totally* transcends time and space--as its subject matter would require to be successfully told. Thank you non-linear editing! Here technology advances art rather than compensates for the fact that there's little art to begin with.
But with a screen adaptation from David Hare, whose work I greatly admire (from a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Michael Cunningham, whose work I admit I know little of), there undoubtedly will be plenty of art. And "plenty" is an appropriate word, because Hare wrote the stage play, and then adapted the screenplay, of Plenty, a work with many similar themes. The movie version of Plenty starred Merryl Streep. Here she is back, sharing the screen with two other heavyweight actresses who actually manage to steal the show from her just a bit (when that happens you know you're in a movie with good acting!). At the same time, while I was at first a little disappointed in Meryl's performance, a second viewing revealed more depth: while some have said she overacts and telegraphs her persona, I'm now convinced that's the intention, that she's playing a character who doesn't know who she is and thus acts the way she thinks someone like her--an Ivy League, upper-middle class literate New York career woman--*should* act, while being none too convinced of it at the same time. It's far from the "standard issue Streep" performance that some critics accused her of.
In addition, there's Julianne Moore in a terrific turn as a populuxe-era housewife, polyester-pampered and smothered by suburbia, smiling through nervous tics as she dotes over her son (Six-year-old Jack Rovello in a performance that manages to convey all kinds of subtext). She also can't pull off how she senses she is supposed to act, while her "perfect" neighbor, wonderfully played by Toni Collette, has mastered it perfectly. (I'm sure she mentally blots out the kiss the moment after it happens to her, since it's beyond her suburban comprehension.) Finally there's the utterly transformed Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, who in some ways comes across as the most centered and sane person in the story. And that's frightening, given that she takes her own life. (No, that's not a spoiler. It happens in the first two minutes and besides, anyone who doesn't already know VW committed suicide in real life should rent Anaconda 2 instead of this film.) And that's one of the most remarkable things about this movie: it does not moralize about suicide. Without saying much at all, it suggests that--perhaps--for some people it *may* be the best solution. Or at least not an altogether wrong one. It may not be the most popular point of view about suicide, but as Woolf points out in one of the movie's most moving scenes, it's not you but *I* who have to live this life. The movie is powerful, but refreshingly unsentimental. That is another of its strengths.
By transcending space and time with rapid cuts, we get the universality of the issues even while the specificity of the situations is highlighted. Often when reading literature or listening to music, I've felt the creator reaching through time and space to talk to me directly, cutting through hundreds of years of history in between. This film finds a very solid way of suggesting that.
Some people have criticized the movie for being pretentious, and in a way it could be argued that it is. Here some of the flaws are evident: the whole subplot with the gay ex-husband (a poet no less!) feels labored and self-conscious. I never bought his line of action and found his presence to be an artifice. There's also a linkage between him and another character that is presented with the subtlety of a boulder. Also, the cross-cutting can get sharp at times--perhaps too much significance is found in cracked eggs and tossing food into the garbage pail, and there's a line regarding a dead bird--"Maybe it was its time to die, everything has a time to die" that is really heavy-handed. The film tends towards a certain self-congratulatory smugness at times, with its tone of "Aren't we clever to be dealing with this big stuff" to the music of everyone's favorite egghead composer of the moment, Philip Glass. (Whose score is so close to parts of the second movement of Franck's F minor Quintet that I wonder if that piece was used as a temp track.)
Now the rebuttal: somehow this material supports a certain amount of artiness. This film *is* trying to wrestle with big themes, themes that most films (American films, at least) rarely touch. How do three women across a span of time and social space each deal with the same issues? What does it mean when you have everything you could ask for materially but you are still unhappy? How does it feel to be forced into a lifestyle you don't want? What if the lifestyle you crave doesn't exist yet, or is unknown to you at the time?
The DVD contains quite a few extras, and this from Paramount, which normally provides only bare-bones releases. There are two commentary tracks, one from the trio of lead actresses (Moore's are the most insightful and, surprisingly, Streep's are the most pedestrian) and one from director Stephen Daldry and novelist Cunningham. There are also featurettes on the real Virginia Woolf, the production, the actresses talking about their roles, Woolf's book Mrs. Dalloway which inspired Cunningham's novel, and Glass talking about his music. There's also the theatrical trailer--very well done.
This DVD is in fact a model of what Paramount *should* be doing with all its releases. The print is crisp and bright, menus are easy to navigate, and the extras really enhance our understanding of the work. A great DVD. From Paramount. Whudda thunkit?
Description of The Hours
THE HOURS tells the story of three very different individuals who share the feeling that they have been living their lives for someone else. Virginia Woolf (Kidman) lives in a suburb of London in the 1920?s as she struggles to begin writing her first great novel, Mrs. Dalloway, while also attempting to overcome the mental illness that threatens to engulf her. Laura Brown (Moore), a young wife and mother in post-World War II Los Angeles, is just starting to read Mrs. Dalloway, and is so deeply affected by it that she begins to question the life she has chosen for herself. Then, in contemporary New York City, Clarissa Vaughan (Streep) is a modern-day mirror image of Woolf?s Mrs. Dalloway as she plans what may be the final party for her friend and former lover, Richard (Harris), who is dying of AIDS.Delicate and hypnotic, The Hours interweaves three stories with remarkable skill: in the 1920s Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) grapples with her inner demons and slowly works on her novel Mrs. Dalloway; in 1949 housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) feels her own destructive impulses; and in 1999 book editor Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep)--much like the title character of Woolf's novel--prepares to throw a party, in honor of her dearest friend, a seriously ill poet (Ed Harris). Small details reverberate from story to story as a powerhouse cast (including Allison Janney, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, John C. Reilly, Stephen Dillane, and Miranda Richardson) gives subtle and beautifully modulated performances. In the hands of director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot), The Hours is almost more a piece of music than a story, and like music, it may move you in unexpected ways. --Bret Fetzer
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