Netflixing: The Hours

Casting around for a decent movie on Netflix last weekend I settled on The Hours.

"This one is unlikely to be full of slash bangs and violence", I said, "and look it has 5 stars!"
"It had better be good, commented husband - considering that cast list, it must have been a very expensive film to make, even in 2002."

Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore head the cast, with Ed Harris, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney and Claire Danes in secondary or minor roles.

Two hours later, as the credits rolled, my first remark was - "What an utterly depressing and highly pretentious movie!"

I'd been constantly irritated by the film's every character except, perhaps, a little boy, a little girl, and Allison Janney (aka CJ Cregg of The West Wing).

According to the few reviews I read afterwards, I appear to be on the wrong side of the critical appreciation fence. The vast majority of reviewers heap praise upon everything connected to The Hours. I will admit that Nicole Kidman's acting was a whole lot better than in some others of her films, and that and she, equipped with prosthetic nose, as Virginia Woolf actually irritated me the least.

What's it all about?

Well...there's a bit of time travel involved - of a sort. The story, adapted from an acclaimed novel, same title, by Michael Cunningham, centres on specific days in the lives of three women of different decades of the 20th century. Virginia Woolf, British writer (Nicole Kidman)in the 1940s; Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a 1950s housewife in suburban USA; and book editor Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a 1990s a sophisticated New Yorker. There are time-spanning links between the three women: one writes a novel "Mrs Dalloway", one reads the novel, and one lives the novel (kind of). It's a clever concept that could, in my opinion, have been put to much better use than setting its focus on suicide, and generally self-absorbed, spoiled individuals who had so much to be thankful for, but remained "unsatisfied". Two of the women had supportive, loving husbands, the other a long-term loving lesbian relationship - this is no tale of spousal abuse. On second thoughts though, perhaps it is, and mental abuse comes from the women involved causing different levels of pain and sorrow upon the males in their lives.

Was it a "Feminist Film"? If it was, I'm even less of a feminist than I thought! If I suspected that that's how most women are: spoiled, selfish, self-absorbed then I'd immediately tear up my (small "f") feminist card!

A decent review by Gabrielle Wenig from 2003 (I did eventually find one I agreed with), states:

The subversive message in The Hours is: Life is only worthwhile if it is fiercely exhilarating and intoxicating, and death is to be preferred over an existence that in any way fails to match this measure. In the world of the film, blessed ordinariness – love, affection, security, and routine – is death, while madness, that is, meanness or an exclusive and sadistic regard for one’s own interests, is life.

For that reason, it is difficult to think of The Hours as a women’s film, for the women in it find their escape from the ordinary through others’ pain. It is a film that calls on us to celebrate women who act on base instinct, ostentatiously abandoning the everydayness they are encumbered with, and searching for salvation only in choices that remove them from the simple things in life. This rejection of the so-called ordinary appears to fortify these women, giving them a feeling of entitlement to something different and better. The film conveniently sanitizes the hideous consequences of these choices, by exhorting us to admire women who achieve a self-awareness that is constructed from the wreckage of others’ emotions, and an obsequious servitude to their own impulses........

There is little doubt that The Hours will achieve Academy recognition for its showcase of superior achievements in all aspects of film, but the high level of craftsmanship serves a deeply disturbing end. It is a film that valorizes the abnegation of moral responsibility, and the poise and precision of its craft draws us into a willing suspension of our instinctive sense of what is life-affirming and good. We lose our moral bearing as we concentrate on the self-absorption of these women –and in the solipsistic world of The Hours, that is all that matters.

It's an expertly made, quality film, interesting for its construction, if irritating (for me) in its storylines.