Making enemies is what I do best, so I'm gonna be that guy who goes out on a limb and says he didn't see what all the hubbub was about.
The plot covers three women in three different times all dealing with the same things in slightly different ways. First, there is the disturbed Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) in 1929. As her husband (Stephen Dillane) does his best to limit her opportunities to commit suicide, she works on a novel about a depressed woman planning a party, theoretically to hide the fact that she's miserable inside. Then there's Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a pregnant housewife in 1951, who, between baking a cake for her fascinatingly plain husband (John C. Reilly) and contemplating suicide, is reading the very book Virginia Woolf writes (or wrote). Finally, in present day, there is Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) who is driving herself crazy preparing a party for her terminally ill friend Richard (Ed Harris) when really she should just sit at home and be depressed because her life is pointless. It's along those lines anyway. As Woolf finishes her novel and her fate, so do the other two women.
Although plagued by some of the silliest and overwritten dialogue I've seen in a while, Kidman's acting trademark seems to be that of making bold emotional choices. Sometimes it comes off as melodramatic (Eyes Wide Shut), but when it works, it works very well. People are bound to say that her prosthetic nose won her the Oscar, and where I agree that attractive starlets often get unwarranted praise just for being made ugly, Kidman's performance is genuinely satisfying. She is at a serious advantage, however, acting opposite Stephen Dillane, who gives an incredibly convincing and moving portrayal as her husband. It's easy to forget, but half of a good performance can generally be credited to the presence of a competent co-star. There's really no point in going into detail with Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep, who deliver fine performances as expected. Ed Harris provides the film with much needed intensity while John C. Reilly re-creates his role from Chicago. Miranda Richardson does an excellent job (as expected) playing Woolf's sister, but the character seems to serve very little purpose. Similarly, Claire Danes makes an appearance as Vaughn's daughter, Allison Janney as Vaughn's lover and Jeff Daniels as Richard's ex. Toni Collette has a memorable scene as Brown's friend.
Composer Phillip Glass once took a silly urban horror flick and turned it into a disturbing gothic monster movie called Candyman. His score for The Hours uses similar elements, mostly a few simple bars repeated over and over, but in a way that does seem to affect your heartrate. But it would seem director Steven Daldry (Billy Elliot) relies on Glass's music a little too much to hold the film's three stories together into one. The music is always present and eventually becomes a superfluous distraction from Daldry's other already sufficient tools. For example, if one character in one time period picks up a flower vase, he will then cut to another woman in another period doing something similarly flower-related. This is clever and effective enough and sometimes makes the intensely dramatic music feel like overkill.
It's difficult to say what the point of the movie is. Yes, it uses some innovative directing and editing style as well as some excellent performances and superb make-up effects, but what is it about and why are we required to watch it? This I can't answer. Woolf is depressed because she's mentally ill, but Brown and Vaughn seem depressed because of unrequited expectations of life. So? Vaughn is a lesbian, apparently unhappy with her relationship. Brown suggests she may secretly be a lesbian when she kisses her friend. And Woolf is suggested to be a lesbian (or at least incestuous) when she kisses her sister. Perhaps the film is suggesting that homosexuality is the source of these three women's woes. But, frankly, I can't see why anyone would want to make a movie about that.
The Hours does manage to capture some significant elements of femininity, mental illness and the meaning of loving life and loving a person. This introspection, combined with the good performances and decent directing do make the film worth seeing. However, it often confuses being obsessive and depressing with being powerful filmmaking and I'm positive I understand women less now. B-
