The Hours, showing at Chandler’s Upper Gallery this Sunday, 19 April, 6pm, is about a single day in the lives of three women of different generations who are affected by the fictional character Mrs Dalloway – Virginia Woolf is writing it, Laura Brown is reading it, and Clarissa Vaughan is living it out. The film adopts what Woolf’s book, Mrs Dalloway, is famous for – stream of consciousness, shifting points of view, and shifting perceptions. The literary references in this film are rapid-fire. A little recognition will go a long way. Look for: Virginia Woolf the woman and the icon; the novel Mrs Dalloway; the later novel The Hours, by Michael Cunningham; the character Mrs Dalloway, as reflected by Meryl Streep playing Clarissa Vaughan, nicknamed Mrs Dalloway by her poet/friend/ex-lover Richard Brown (played by Ed Harris); Richard Brown, in turn, as the character Samuel from Cunningham’s novel, on which this movie is based, and also as a character called Septimus from Mrs Dalloway, and also, to some extent, that novel’s character of Sally. Now then.
Beautiful beautiful acting by Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman and Claire Danes in the ladies’ section, Ed Harris and Stephen Dillane representing the men. Jeff Daniels makes a brief appearance, too, as a yummy-scummy, well-dressed ex. Julianne Moore is quite miraculous in tying themes together. Claire Danes, as Julia Vaughan (Clarissa’s daughter) is a total magnet in her scenes, with a brief but enormously satisfying scene with the elder Julianne Moore (who plays Laura Brown, the raw-post-war housewife who is reading Mrs Dalloway). One other scene stands out especially for this writer – when Kidman (as Virginia Woolf) gets through to her husband at the train station. The painful tension between society’s expectations and human reality and needs is poignant here. The film is especially dense, yet it deals with the simplest of human features - love, and the sharing of love.
(reviewed by Eva Zimet)