The Hours

Perhaps due to my reaction to Stephen Daldry's THE READER, I was not hopeful for his earlier, 2002 film, THE HOURS. THE READER was one of the worst films I've ever seen. It still resonates in my mind how much I actively hated it. So many films like THE BOUNTY HUNTER or Katherine Heigl movies I despise, but they eventually subside in my mind. Not Daldry's films. THE HOURS, like THE READER is a work of terrible direction. I place all blame on Daldry, who I would name as one of the worst directors alive, especially because he is so wrongly lauded. With THE HOURS, Daldry takes three lives of three women and likens them to a book nobody's (or at least, few seeing this film) read: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The first story is that of Virginia Woolf herself, played in a pure, waspy impression not performance by Nicole Kidman. In it, the camerawork is most seductively dank, but the story is a pure impression, a pure 'this is what Woolf looked like' kind of depth. The second story takes place in the late 50's. A mother (insufferable Julianne Moore) considers suicide after reading Mrs. Dalloway. Sadly though, her husband is extremely likeable, the child is unrealistically knowledgable and fakey, and the camerawork, as it is in many of the so-called emotional bits of the film is invaded by grating, manipulative music that isn't a step away from Superbowl commercial sentimentality. Most unlikeable here is the selfishness of the mother. She doesn't come across as independent, but as a sad bi-product of feminism: misplaced selfishness and misinterpretation of independence in the form of self absorption. She leaves her children and husband to live her own "fruitful" life, which seems so full of the knowledge that she abandoned her family. The third story takes place in modern times. Meryl Streep plays a sad lesbian who's arranging a party and seems happy but isn't (as it is in Mrs. Dalloway). She feels none of the constraints of Moore or Kidman's character, but she is just as mopey. Daldry at least convinced me here that people will never be happy with what they get if they're meant to be unhappy. What an anti-feminist statement, unintentionally of course. Gratingly, Daldry plows every scene into our faces with an overuse of music and a poor sense of morality and art. He dilutes everything to simplistic terms, emotion and art both. Every actor is so actorly and over-directed, that they become fake and obvious, pure oscar bait actually. It's the kind of acting where it's so obviously fake and, well, acted, that it seems like good acting. This is a terrible film.
The Hours: ★