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The Hours (Widescreen Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 24 June, 2003 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $9.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Complete Cast (14 total) |
The Hours (Widescreen Edition) Reviews
Devastating
This is a devastating, haunting, gunshot of an emotional story. And absolutely brilliant in the process of deconstruction it forces the viewer (or reader--I found it very true to the rhythm and depth of the book) to go through in order to reach the other side.
There are moments in this film that I have thought about nearly every day since first seeing it in 2003, and it still comes up in conversation on a regular basis. I have, however, stopped recommending it to just anyone. I have found that many people are afraid to empathize with disturbed characters, or question their own morality and life choices. It is a matter of trust, I think, that when you get through it, you will have gained something of value.
Particularly poignant for me was Julianne Moore's driving away scene. I think many of us grew up with distant or unhappy mothers who felt that they were trapped and stunted, who wanted to be fully present, but weren't mentally able to be because they were wrestling invisible things we couldn't understand.
I find inner journeys to be the most compelling, and being an audio learner, this was a beautiful movie to listen to as well.
I know people get aggravated when pretty girls are cast to play plainer characters, but you have to give credit to Nicole Kidman for this one. As gorgeous as she is, she has always come across to me as someone who has this sort of quiet, dark part. She certainly showed here that she can reach farther than those who see her as a "pretty girl" alone gave her credit for.
A virtuoso film of power and beauty
The Hours made me think of MTV, of all things. For the most part I've decried the MTV effect on the editing of Hollywood films. Movies today don't sit still for more than a few seconds. They jump, they cut, they flash. The editing is razzle-dazzle, to draw attention to itself. (This is true of television, too--CSI, Lost, etc.) All this has effected--and generally not for the good, I feel--the type of subject matter one gets and the handling of subject matter on film. My heart is more often back in the 70s, when editing was slower, more subservient to the story. (One of the reason editing is more flashy today is because it's simply easier to do, so editors can't resist the temptation; to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.)
But here's a film that's used changes in editing technique and technology for maximum advantage. The Hours really pushes our time perspectives: it doesn't just tell two parallel stories gradually, as Godfather II (1974) did; it doesn't flip scenes in time and space, as Plenty (1985) or The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1987) did; it doesn't tell a story backwards the way Memento (2000) did. The Hours cross-cuts three stories in rapid succession, to the point that some characters end sentences and actions that other characters began in different points of time and space. Oddly, rather than being confusing, this technique adds clarity, and technically that to me is The Hours' greatest achievement. This is the first film I've ever seen that I feel *totally* transcends time and space--as its subject matter would require to be successfully told. I don't know if it would have been possible in an age before non-linear editing, but it surely would have been a nightmare. Here technology advances art rather than compensates for the fact that there's little art to begin with.
But with a screen adaptation from David Hare, whose work I greatly admire (from a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Michael Cunningham, whose work I admit I know little of), there undoubtedly will be plenty of art. And "plenty" is a good choice of words, because Hare wrote the stage play, and then adapted the screenplay, of Plenty, a work with many similar themes. The movie version of Plenty starred Merryl Streep. Here she is back, sharing the screen with two other heavyweight actresses who actually manage to steal the show from her just a bit (when that happens you know you're in a movie with good acting!). First there's Julianne Moore in a terrific turn as a populuxe-era housewife, polyester-pampered and smothered by suburbia, smiling through nervous tics as she dotes over her son (Six-year-old Jack Rovello in a performance that manages to convey all kinds of subtext). And there's the unforgettable, utterly transformed Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf, who in some ways comes across as the most centered and sane person in the story. And that's frightening, given that she takes her own life. (No, that's not a spoiler. It happens in the first two minutes and besides, anyone who doesn't already know VW committed suicide in real life should rent Anaconda 2 instead of this film.) And that's one of the most remarkable things about this movie: it does not moralize about suicide. Without saying much at all, it suggests that--perhaps--for some people it *may* be the best solution. Or at least not an altogether wrong one. It may not be the most popular point of view about suicide, but as Woolf points out in one of the movie's most moving scenes, it's not you but *I* who have to live this life. The movie is powerful, but refreshingly unsentimental. That is another of its strengths.
By transcending space and time with rapid cuts, we get the universality of the issues even while the specificity of the situations is highlighted. Often when reading literature or listening to music, I've felt the creator reaching through time and space to talk to me directly, cutting through hundreds of years of history in between. This film finds a very solid way of suggesting that.
Some people have criticized the movie for being pretentious, and in a way it could be argued that it is. The cross-cutting can get sharp at times--perhaps too much significance is found in cracked eggs and tossing food into the garbage pail, and there's a line regarding a dead bird--"Maybe it was its time to die, everything has a time to die" that is really heavy-handed in context. At the same time, somehow this material supports a certain artiness. This film *is* trying to wrestle with big themes, themes that most films (at least in America) rarely touch. How do three women across a span of time and social space each deal with the same issues? What does it mean when you have everything you could ask for materially but you are still unhappy? How does it feel to be forced into a lifestyle you don't fit into? What if the lifestyle you crave doesn't exist yet, or is unknown to you at the time? How do you cope? Thematically this film dealt with a lot of the same issues as American Beauty, only that film dealt with it at a high school level and this film is for grownups.
All this is beautifully shot (maybe too beautifully--seems like every scene involving Virginia Woolf is filmed at sunset), with a delicate score by Philip Glass. At first I was going to say it's standard-issue Philip Glass, but while you have the expected minimalist ruminations here, there's also more of an emotional underpinning, an arc that follows the movies emotions very subtly. You'll have to watch the film several times before noticing this, or at least I did. (Actually, best to watch the movie several times before passing judgment, period. A lot of the content is only gleaned after the fact.)
The DVD contains quite a few extras, and this from Paramount, which normally provides only bare-bones releases. There are two commentary tracks, one from the primary actresses and one from director Stephen Daldry and novelist Cunningham. There are also featurettes on the real Virginia Woolf, the production, the three actresses talking about their roles, Woolf's book Mrs. Dalloway which inspired Cunningham's novel, and Glass talking about his music. There's also the theatrical trailer--very well done.
This DVD is in fact a model of what Paramount *should* be doing with all its releases. The print is crisp and bright, menus are easy to navigate, and the extras really enhance our understanding of the work. A great DVD of a great film. Buy it buy it buy it.
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