Review of The Hours, directed by Stephen Daldry

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog, and fell back more into literary criticism. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

Because I was on a tight budget and could only afford so many streaming subscriptions while unemployed, I had to pick and choose what subscriptions I could have at a certain moment in time. Back when I was working as a critic I found myself having all of them, but I was treating myself during this time with a Criterion subscription briefly for three months.

At the end of the three months I was really cramming in all of the movies I wanted to finish because I had to cancel the subscription. I had not heard of The Hours before I saw it suggested on my homepage, but I wanted to watch it as soon as I read the synopsis. And so I did!

Let’s get into the review. I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

The story of three women across different time periods, including Virginia Woolf.

This is a movie that focuses on three different women, cutting across the three time periods (1923, 1951, and 2001) across the course of the movie. I think for the sake of clarity, making this review in chronological order from these three time periods would make the most sense, so that’s what I’m going to go with.

The woman we focus on in 1923 is Virginia Woolf, who, if you know her history, is going to have a tragic ending. The movie starts when she is writing her book Mrs. Dalloway, and is already suffering from poor mental health issues. She’s having mental breakdowns throughout the movie, and her husband even is staying at home to make sure she doesn’t do something to herself.

When her sister comes to visit with her children, that leads to even more inner conflict within Virginia. When they leave, she goes to the railroad station and plans to flee into London, but then her husband shows up and says he’s afraid that she is going to kill herself. She admits she worries about that, too, but she has a right to decide what she wants to do with her life.

Her story ends in 1941, when she fills her pockets with stones and walks into a large river by herself, effectively ending her life. We’re now pivoting to 1951, in Los Angeles, when Laura Brown, a housewife, is pregnant. Despite her comfortable life, having achieved the American Dream, she doesn’t enjoy it. The next big event is when she is making a cake for her son, but it doesn’t turn out well.

Her neighbor shows up asking if Laura can feed her dog while she’s in the hospital, but Laura kisses her. They ignore the implications of what just happened, and then she bakes another cake with her son. She decides to commit suicide, then drops her son off with another woman. He begs her to not leave him there, and she tells him she’ll be back.

However, when she goes into the hotel and takes out the pills (and, interestingly, a copy of Woolf’s novel), she wakes up from her attempt. She picks up her son from the woman she dropped him off with and goes to celebrate her husband’s birthday.

The next storyline is in 2001, when Clarissa is getting together a party to celebrate her friend Richard. A prominent poet and author, he has received a major award for her his work, and she wants to gather everyone to celebrate. However, he has AIDS, and his time might not be much longer. Richard also is very clearly depressed, and Clarissa is worried about what he might do to himself.

With the help of her partner and daughter, she prepares the food and everything for the party. She goes to visit Richard in his apartment, and we learn they used to date in college before they both realized they were gay. Richard goes on a tangent about how he never wanted to live, but he stayed alive for Clarissa.

They have a long conversation and moment with each other. But when he tells her she was the most beautiful thing in his life, he commits suicide by jumping out the window. Clarissa is horrified and definitely traumatized by this, and the party is canceled.

That night, while grieving in her apartment, Laura from 1951 shows up. Turns out Richard is Richie, the little son from the previous story. She abandoned him after giving birth, leaving behind Richie and her husband for a new life. Instead of killing herself, she decided to change her life, but it left a profound trauma on Richie because she left him behind (and we saw when she went to kill herself, he was desperately afraid of her leaving him behind).

Overall Thoughts

I found this to be quite a profound movie at the end of the day. By connecting these three women’s stories, it shows how we’re all in conversation with each other, even if we live in different time periods. Woolf is the common thread between all three stories, as even Clarissa is referred to by Richard as Mrs. Dalloway.

Woolf may have chosen to end her life, but her statement about making a decision shapes the rest of the movie. All of these women have decisions to make, and Richard, who was impacted by his mother’s decision, is someone who finds himself with no other option to end his pain and suffering.

I’m glad I watched this. Women’s stories and listening to them have always been a key part of my practice as a writer, artist, and academic, and this is one of those movies that exemplifies why we collect said stories. They create ripple effects, even if women are usually invisible.

So go watch this one if you haven’t already and are interested. Movies are meant to be experienced, not read about, after all.