“The Hours”

“The Hours” focuses on three women who are secretly unhappy in their lives: Virginia Woolf the author, Clarissa a lesbian throwing a party for an ex-lover with AID’s , and Laura, a lonely housewife. All of these roles are played by great actresses including Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. One of the underlying focuses of “The Hours” is suicide. We all know that Woolf committed suicide and that is depicted in the film. But all of the women experience or encounter suicide in some way throughout the film. The characters are also related to Woolf by the novel Mrs.Dalloway:
1923 was the year that Woolf wrote the book, Laura reads it so she won’t succumb to boredom and Richard (Clarissa’s ex-lover) jokingly calls her Mrs. Dalloway which is also ironic because Clarissa was Mrs. Dalloway’s first name. “The Hours” is a great movie that shows how important it is to be true to ourselves, that mental illness can be passed down and that love is blind.

  Nicole Kidman is made to look like Woolf with a prosthetic nose, mousy-brown hair and plain clothes. Kidman’s version of Woolf is a great and albeit true one. Woolf is intelligent yet somewhat cold and snobbish. Woolf seems to want to be left alone but when she her sister and her sister’s children come to visit she seems to enjoy the company. But it does get a little weird when Woolf kisses her sister. Woolf was a lesbian but maybe she was just trying to seek comfort and solace with someone. It was clear she wasn’t happy: she repeatedly told Richard she hated Richmond and was lonely. When Woolf commits suicide by filling her pockets with rocks and drowning herself it is a sad and short scene.
                     
Laura, played by Julianne Moore is a secretly sad and lonely housewife who reads “Mrs. Dalloway” so she wont succumb to boredom. Laura looks like any other housewife but she doesn’t feel like one. She’s pregnant with her second child and is always with her clingy son Richie. When her friend Kitty comes over to tell her that she is sick Laura kisses her. Here we see one of the reasons why Laura is unhappy. She is secretly gay and has to hide her feelings. Coming-out in the 1950’s was simply unexceptable back then. The ideal woman was supposed to stay home, cook and clean for her husband and raise her children. Richie also seems to view everything about his mother, so it seems to effect him. After the kiss Laura goes to a hotel to commit suicide by taking pills. But she later returns home and throws the birthday party for her son. It’s a good thing that she didn’t commit suicide but it’s sad that she has to go on living a lie. This is similar to what Woolf says in the film: “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
 
 Clarissa is a lesbian living in the modern day. She has a daughter that is of college-age played by Claire Danes who joins her when she is preparing Richard’s party.  Richard appears ravaged by AID’s: he is shockingly thin and depressed. Although both are gay, both Richard and Clarissa dated in college. Clarissa seems to still love Richard, and it is evident by her affection and kindness toward him. Also when Clarissa says, “That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other,” we can see that she is thinking of what life would be like without Richard. But Richard later succumbs to his depression and kills himself. We later find out that he is Laura’s son. He believes that his illness was passed on to him. But what illness he is talking about? It could be that he thinks that he inherited being gay from his mother. Or his mental illness, as he is suicidal and his mother was too. Although she came back from the hotel Laura later left her family after giving birth to her second child. When she hears of her son’s death she thinks that maybe that was a horrible mistake.
 
I think that if she had seen it Woolf would’ve been proud of “The Hours”. It did not paint a false version of her and it discusses the message she wanted to live her life by. Which is being true to oneself. -- Baha Awadallah