Thoughts on The Hours Film

  

    Virginia Woolf, in her novel Mrs. Dalloway, tells a story through competing perspectives and discontinuous narratives, to accurately present modern life. However, in the film The Hours, we can see a postmodern effect as it has been created as a sort of fragmented pastiche. The film uses elements like parallel and match editing, where the same scenes suddenly shift to other timelines. We witness parallel stories in different periods, seeing how Virginia Woolf’s story Mrs. Dalloway is not just an exposition on life, it is life in its purest form; it is the raw and complete plight of a woman captured in one day, which can be replayed and repeated in any time period. 

    In The Hours, I noticed that some characters doubled as others. I know I cannot precisely say that “character A” is “character B”, for the people portrayed in The Hours are all complex and unique. However, I would like to point out some character similarities: Clarissa Vaughan seems to be a blend between Mrs. Dalloway’s Clarissa Dalloway and Rezia wrapped into one character. Clarissa Vaughan is throwing a party, however, she finds it her duty to check in on her ill friend Richard, to make sure he is following doctors’ orders, taking medication, etc, similar to how Rezia does this to Septimus in Mrs. Dalloway. I found that Richard is presented as a Septimus or even a Virginia Woolf, in the sense that he is the sickly one, he is also the visionary and the poet. He is the one who must die, according to Virginia Woolf. In Virginia Woolf’s timeline, she is also the “Septimus”, as she is the visionary who also, unfortunately, dies by taking her life (it is quite paradoxical and peculiar that her life closely followed that of a character which she created). 

    I thought that Louis is kind of like Peter Walsh (regarding only the plot of Mrs. Dalloway, as Louis does not seem to have an essential role). Louis visits Clarissa right before her party. It is evident that there were some previous feelings between Louis and Clarissa. In The Hours, Clarissa is the one who breaks down crying, and not Louis. Louis (parallel to Peter) then confesses that he is in love again, I think this was kind of jokingly? However, he says that he is in love with a student back in San Francisco, similar to how Peter confesses he is in love with a young girl, Daisy, back in India.  

    I could not decipher the characters in the third storyline, with the woman, Laura, who is expecting a baby. I found that the dialogue in this section was succinct and because of this, Laura’s storyline was especially hard to relate to. This also is perhaps the genius of Laura’s storyline; she is so cold and her dialogue is so short that she comes across as a completely unrelatable and hollowed form, devoid of life. Clearly, Laura is portraying Clarissa. However, I could not tell initially who Kitty (Laura’s friend who cannot have children) was “supposed” to portray and what her purpose was in this section. At first, I figured Kitty is parallel to Mrs. Kilman, as she seems envious of Laura (who is expecting a baby) since she cannot have children. Kitty also criticizes Laura’s cake, which I believe represents “life”. She tells Laura that “making a cake is easy” and she cannot understand why Laura has such difficulty making cakes! Kitty then merges into a “Sally Seaton”, as she proceeds to kiss Laura on the lips. Kitty does not perfectly match with one character in Mrs. Dalloway, and catalyzes Laura’s timeline, showing how confused Laura truly is. 

    Lastly, I would like to examine the character of Virginia Woolf, who of course, portrays Virginia Woolf (although, as previously mentioned, Virginia’s character/psyche aligns closely with that of Septimus). She is deeply troubled, and I would like to quickly make note of Nicole Kidman’s brilliant portrayal of Virginia Woolf (viewers could see the affliction in her eyes). However, I digress. Virginia’s niece and nephews visit, and during their visit, the children find a sick bird. They begin digging its grave before it has even died, instead of trying to save it. Virginia Woolf is the bird and sees herself in this bird. “The ‘females'’ are larger and less colorful”, she remarks to her niece, and the female bird is being buried (this remark is not only about the bird, but also about women). The bird funeral finishes and the children continue to play and dance around its grave unknowingly; life moves on, just as Woolf states, “death is absolute” and the world continues to move on. I wondered at the part where Wool solemnly looks into the bird’s eyes, what is she thinking about? Perhaps, here she has the epiphany of suicide, in her own life, or in her story? Perhaps here, she decides who she is going to kill. Even though Woolf confesses that the poet must die, I still wonder, why does she decide not to kill off Clarissa Dalloway as well? Why does Clarissa Dalloway get to live?