Do We Know Ourlseves?

Three women, three times, three places. There are three suicide attempts, two successful. That characterises the movie: The Hours.

In Sussex Virginia Wolf fills her pockets with stones and walks into the river. In Los Angeles Laura Brown fills her purse with medicine and checks into a hotel room. In New York Clarissa Vaughan watches the man she once loved to see he lets himself fall out of a window, or not. The plot takes place in three different places. But in every place in the first shots three women have breakfast, buy flowers and prepare to throw a party.

The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham, doesn’t try to force the stories to become parallel. In the film Wolf has her own room and an understanding husband. Laura does not love her husband although she is a typical suburban housewife with a loving husband. Clarissa who lives in the present is a lesbian who is living with her partner and a daughter. She is caring for a friend who is suffering from AIDS. The progression of the three stories show that freedom has expanded during the decades but human responsibilities have not. It also shows that suicide comes in different ways.

The three actresses, Nicole Kidman, Maryl Streep and Julianne Moore play these roles very well. They identify with the characters completely. We can even say that these roles were written for them. Although, they have to play such sad roles, they play them very well. In this move there is not really any chemistry between the characters, although two characters do meet in the end, but I will not say which ones.

I would highly recommend this movie to those people who love dramas and a little mystery. The atmosphere in this movie is mysterious, because of the camera movement and how the characters are played.