Review of THE HOURS

FIGURING THE HOURS

by 

Mary M. Gilvary

My friend and I decided to see "The Hours" last Sunday.  I told her that one of my exercise buddies had vehemently recommended a No See.  She said that the reviews had not disclosed what was significant in the movie.  She said that the women in the movie were lesbian or there was a lesbian outlook in the movie.  She also intimated that particularly without advance notice, this was a reprehensible violation of the social culture.  What would they cover further next week or month?     I laughed and said that if there were reporting in the movies, the subject is accepted.  There was no need to worry about what will be reported next week or next month.  There will be only new developments tomorrow at the sexual frontier.  It is just one of the basic life areas.     Maybe I should have paid more attention to her disapproval of the film. After viewing I found myself quite a bit discombobulated.  This film gets your attention in its focus on suicide.  There was for me and my friend a need to react and talk about the film afterward.  It's a film dealing with three women, at three particular time periods, who are not able to find a comfortable life for themselves.  They are suffering anguish; maybe they are incidentally bi-sexual but they are either suicidal or someone close to them is suicidal. The film opens with Virginna Wolfe walking in over her head into a lovely pong or maybe it was a lake.  My friend guessed that she might be processing the film for at least the next day or two.  I've already spent a week.     I'm delighted that I saw the film but it's not entertainment.  It's an experience where you join with the three women in their anguish, also of their children and husband or lover, as the case may be.  Nobody in the film can easily reconcile their inner and outer lives.  The principals all are upper middle class and privileged.  Meryl Streep is the only with a strong enough character to contain strong conflict and function effectively in the world. This is the interior landscape of all of us to a greater or lesser degree of fear and therefore of insanity.     Even in the external world there is all manner of violations of expectations.  The husband of Julianne Moore thanks she loves him and their child.  She probably does but she leaves them both.  An ex-lover of Meryl attacks her with the most wounding of hostility even though she is doing her utmost to make his life comfortable.  The man, however, doesn't want to live.     This is a woman's film, all about relationships and the passage of time. Beauty is downplayed.  I thought Nicole and Julianne looked hideous in some scenes.  At the same time in those scenes, they looked vulnerable and lovely.