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The Hours counts the seconds that add up to a life
by Adrienne Martini
Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway is one of the few books that I've never finished reading—which makes it sound like an ongoing project, like I pick it up nightly and read just one sentence. It would be more accurate to say that it is one of the few books that I pick up every couple of years, read the first six or seven pages of, then let languish on my nightstand until I'd give up on it again and give it back to the library, usually overdue.
My problem seems to encompass all of Woolf's books. My copy of To the Lighthouse could be full of blank pages past the first 10 and I would never know. I lost a friend's copy of The Waves and didn't notice for a few years, until it turned up during a move with my bookmark wedged near page 15. My scant knowledge of Woolf lore can be attributed to the Indigo Girls, who wrote a song that quotes one of her most memorable lines about each life having its place.
A college roomie used to chide me about my Woolf issues. "But nothing happens," I'd whine. "Everything happens," she'd counter, "it's just too quiet for you to hear." Then she'd start rambling on about Derrida—never start an argument with an English major because she'll just bury you in wacky literary theories—and bring up yet again the details of Woolf's death, which I had to agree was a cool way to go.
Director Stephen Daldry's The Hours starts with that cool bit, with Woolf filling her pockets with rocks and walking into the Thames, then splits into three separate storylines united only by Mrs. Dalloway. Daldry skips us through time—to the 1920s where we spy on Woolf writing Dalloway, to the '50s where we glimpse a young mother baking a birthday cake, and to the '90s, where we observe a book editor planning a celebration. Only one day in each life is subjected to scrutiny. Nothing much happens for a long time. Then everything happens, but what really happens is not the big, dramatic stuff you can see. And that's what makes The Hours such a devil of a film to write about.
I can tell you the most noticeable bits. Nicole Kidman, for example, is amazing as Woolf and captures this enigmatic writer with a deliciously understated performance. Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore deserve all of the raves they've received because, yes, they are that wonderful. The only wrong note is played by Ed Harris, whose dying poet is an opera diva in a script that only calls for a sensitive singer-songwriter.
At times, screenwriter (and renowned British playwright) David Hare's adaptation of this Michael Cunningham novel seems almost as ham-fisted as Harris' performance, making each line simply fraught with subtext. Each character starts to resemble a vivid butterfly with pins in its wings and pressed under glass. You can turn them every which way, admiring their colors, yet always at a remove and unable to run your fingers over their fuzzy bodies, their papery wings. But after what you think is the climax, you realize that all of the heavy-handed drama is just a bit of misdirection and that the most important parts of the script are the bits where no one is actually speaking. It shouldn't work, but it does.
Perhaps what makes The Hours work is all of Daldry's attention to the details of the three worlds that the script requires. You can almost smell Moore's suburban kitchen or taste Woolf's cigarette simply because these frames are so rich. It seems that nothing was overlooked—even Kidman, who is left-handed, learned to write with her right and mimic Woolf's distinctive lettering. Rather than overwhelm, all of these easy-to-ignore-additions give the film weight.
Still, it's not a perfect picture. Some moments are simply too over-the-top and bring our suspended disbelief crashing down. At times, you are acutely aware that seemingly everyone involved is up for some sort of award and is chock-full of all of the attention-getting flourishes that such roles often contain. But these moments are quickly forgotten and The Hours quiets back down and reconnects with its haunting core.
It's all enough to make me want to pick up old Virginia one more time. I think I might get it now, after having logged a few more hours of my own.
January 23, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 4
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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