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Yes, that's Nicole Kidman on the right, unrecognizable in her role as Virginia Woolf, one of the most acclaimed novelists of the English language. And beside her are two American female characters (played by Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore) of different generations whom The Hours fictitiously yet intimately connects to Woolf through time and space via her novel, 'Mrs Dalloway.'
I'd put off watching The Hours till now, just as I'd put off watching one of director Stephen Daldry's other films, The Reader, till I felt ready. From the little I'd read about both films, I knew that they packed an emotional wallop. In The Hours - and to a similar extent The Reader - it's not the kind of punch that waits for you at the end. Rather, it's an unseen, creeping force of infectious self-destruction that pervades the entire drama and squeezes one's heart up into one's throat for the duration of the film.
Cutting continuously and seamlessly between the three characters, Daldry - using a script by David Hare based on a novel by Michael Cunningham - ruthlessly penetrates the most private, vulnerable thoughts, doubts and emotions of these normally guarded women. Complemented by a stirring score by Philip Glass, the dramatic tension is already at a high level in the opening scenes; yet, through a complex web of tragic beauty, it continues to steadily build to an almost unbearable crescendo, as if we were watching a psychological thriller.
Every bit of acting in The Hours is superb, and this includes the supporting cast of notable actors such as Ed Harris, John C Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Toni Collette, Jeff Daniels and Claire Danes. There is not a moment wasted throughout the constant deliberation on stifling life versus liberating death - if not actual fatality, at least death to life as the protagonists know it - and this leaves us very little room to breathe.
I'm still catching my breath from one of the most powerful, moving dramas I've ever seen.
9.6/10
Last edited by CelluloidChild; 04-13-13 at 01:41 PM.
