The Hours Blog

After watching this movie, and thinking about it for a while, I begin to realize how the film imitates Woolf's style of writing--specifically her almost-stream-of-consciousness. In the film, there seemed to be a second or two too long where the camera focuses on seemingly arbitrary objects, and it reminds me of her "Mark on the Wall" short story or whatever it was. I also found the suicides to be very important: a sort of release from the stuck lives that the main characters were living. Woolf kills herself to get away from some complicated form of life--husband? or insanity/depression? or just being away from London? Julianne Moore's character contemplates committing suicide, and the obvious comparison is drawn when the floodwaters come as she's about to do it in the hotel room. But she actually gets up the courage to leave, eventually. At first I would say the reprecussions of her leaving her traditional woman role causes Ed Harris to kill himself--but rather, their relationship was strained because she was in that draining relationship and not because she left that relationship. Meryll Streep or "Mrs. Dalloway" has similar characteristics as the fictional, Woolf-book character, and as in the book, it is not her that dies but someone else, someone very close. But the suicide serves as a positive in that time-frame, bringing the women together--the guy's mother, "Mrs. Dalloway," her life-partner, and their daughter. So there's also that positive from that death. Although drastic, it seems that's what it took to get a change in their lives--even, as with Woolf's situation, she had to end her life in order to do it. Nonetheless, I'm still not sure what to make of this movie. Interesting at least.