University of Galati Faculty of Letters MA Studies Translation and Interpretation, 2nd year

The Hours
Insight
Students BALABAN OLIVIA

BANU OANA
DRJNEANU ADELA
2011

Overview

Director: Stephen Daldry Writers: Michael Cunningham (novel), David Hare (screenplay) Release Date: 24 January 2003 (USA) Genre: Drama Language: English Setting: Biltmore Hotel - 1200 Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables, Florida, USA, London, England, UK. Cast: Nicole Kidman (Virginia Woolf), Julienne Moore (Laura Brown), Meryl Streep (Clarissa Vaughan), Stephen Dillane (Leonard Woolf), Miranda Richardson (Vanessa Bell), George Loftus (Quentin Bell), Charley Ramm (Julian Bell), Sophie Wyburd (Angelica Bell), Ed Harris (Richard Brown).

Awards:

(2003) Oscar Best Actress in a Leading Role: Nicole Kidman (2003) Amanda - Best Foreign Feature Film: Stephen Daldry (2003) Silver Berlin Bear Best Actress: Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman (2003) Golden Globe - Best Motion Picture Drama Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Drama, Nicole Kidman

Vertical Structure
The Hours focuses on three women or different generations (three levels) whose lives are interconnected by the novel Mrs. Dalloway.

1. Laura Brown a pregnant housewife. 2.Clarissa Vaughan a modern woman living in present time. 3. Virginia Woolf who is struggling with depression and mental illness while trying to write her novel.

Storyline

In 1951, Laura Brown, a pregnant housewife, is planning a party for her husband, but she can't stop reading the novel 'Mrs. Dalloway'. Clarissa Vaughan, a modern woman living in present times is throwing a party for her friend Richard, a famous author dying of AIDS.

Storyline

These two stories are simultaneously linked to the work and life of Virginia Woolf, who's writing the novel mentioned before.

Counting the time in The Hours

The Hours takes place in three different periods of time (multilayered), in each of them evolving one central female character. There is Virginia Woolf, drowning herself in a river in 1941 and, before that, trying to write the first lines of her novel, Mrs. Dalloway, in a quiet suburb in 1923.
Twenty years later, the apparently accomplished Los Angeles housewife and mother Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) reads Mrs. Dalloway in 1952. It is the birthday of her husband, and she comes to the conclusion that her life needs a dramatic change.

In present day New York City, the intellectual and editor Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) prepares a party for her friend and former lover, the poet Richard (Ed Harris), who is suffering from AIDS in its final stage.

Furthermore

Format/medium drama Geography Virginia (Sussex, England) - Laura (Los Angeles) - Clarissa (New York) Iconography/ contents of images the frequent passage from one time to another.

Generic plot

With the exception of the opening and final scenes, which depict the 1941 suicide by drowning of Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) in the River Ouse, the action takes place within the span of a single day in three different years, and alternates among them throughout the film. In 1923, renowned author Woolf has begun writing the book Mrs. Dalloway in her home in the town of Richmond in suburban London. In 1951, troubled Los Angeles housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) tries to find escape from her dreary existence by reading the same book. In 2001, New Yorker Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is the embodiment of the title character of Woolf's work as she spends the day preparing for a party she is hosting in honor of her friend Richard, a poet and author living with AIDS who is to receive an award for career achievement.

Character Type

Virginia : who is tormented by her headaches and voices in her head. The Hours focuses on a day in 1923 when she lived in a suburb of London. Though extremely intelligent and highly respected, she is overly protected by her family, because they fear for her sanity. Laura : the so-called perfect American wife but with strong feelings of uselessness and depression; a suburban housewife in LA in the 1950s, pregnant and mother of a young son. Clarissa: the modern woman and mother who doesnt care about the social barriers. The illness of her friend Richard, however, has caused her to reevaluate her choices in life, precipitating a midlife crisis of sorts. Richard calls her Mrs. Dalloway.

Key sounds:

The clock striking, announcing key moments in the film (as it also does in the novel ). The rush of air The jangle of traffic These sounds air, traffic, and clocks are sounds of life.

Key elements

The idea of suicide: Suicide, contemplated or achieved, occurs in all three strands as it does in Mrs Dalloway, where the shellshocked Great War veteran, Septimus Smith, kills himself. To emphasise this, the movie begins and ends with Woolf's suicide. Before going into the water, she puts large stones in her pockets to keep her under. This is a powerful metaphor. By adding to the forces that pull her down, she ensures her liberation through death from her mental afflictions and frees her husband Leonard (Stephen Dillane) from the pain of caring

for her. (The Observer)

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2003/feb/16/7)

The music

The Hours has music written for it by the famous American contemporary composer Philip Glass, born 1937. He wrote the music for the film after the editing was almost finished, and could therefore make it one piece of art. He says that some musical motifs occur in specific situations in the film and that the three women each have their own leitmotif, but that he chose not to give them different types of music. The reason, he says, is that They really arent separate stories at all. The music should be thematic, rather that just create an atmosphere.

The narrative: time and space

The narrative appears to stand alone.

The narrative is subjective. The voice comes from within in the heads of the three major characters in their respective chapters, with occasional interjections from other characters. Everyone ruminates about his past, present, and future, about other scenes and other places.

Setting

Setting time

Setting place

1941 (the beginning); 1923 (Virginia Woolf sections); 1949 (Laura Brown sections); late twentieth century (Clarissa Vaughn sections).

Sussex, England; Richmond, a suburb of London; Los Angeles; New York City.

Myths and symbols (1)

The myth of the transcendent, preexistent unity is expressed by the symbolic images employed in the novel as well as by the surface action. The day represents the mythical time, the eternal present. London is a symbol of mythical space in which there is no division, but only unity. Marriage is seen as another symbol of unity, despite two kinds of diversity.

Myths and symbols (2)

- On the one hand, there is the obvious diversity of gender; on the other hand, there is the diversity of the independence and separateness of Clarissa and Richard within what is a satisfactory union for both of them.

Heterosexual love (and even homosexual love) is also a symbol of unity. Death can be interpreted as an attempt to communicate; in this way people try to evade from themselves. In this case, it is all about embracing death. The party is highly significant as a symbolic event. It may be interpreted as a reunion after death, a precipitation into the future where Clarissas identity with deity is reveled.

The myth of water

While water communicates the concept of fertility and femininity, its fluidity represents the cycle of life and death. The movie begins with the image of Virginia Woolf, drowning herself in a river. The river represents loneliness, separation and disconnection.
Waves and water regularly wash over events and thoughts. Water is traditionally an image of life and procreation, a symbol of life-giving energy.

The Window

As a symbol of openness towards air and light, the window symbolizes receptiveness; if the window is a round-shaped one, we are dealing with a receptiveness resembling that of the eye and the consciousness; the square window brings forth the concept of terrestrial receptiveness as opposed to the celestial force. (CHEVALIER, Jean, Alain GHEERBRANT (2006) Dictionar de simboluri, p. 42)
a reversed type of receptiveness as myths and symbols function with Virginia Woolf (also see the symbol of water)

Other myths:
Clarissa The The The

a career woman at the age of 50

condition of the artist perfect wife perfect hostess

More symbols
Flowers: are the subject of the famous opening line of Mrs. Dalloway and appear throughout the movie as tools to brighten moments of charged emotional intensity. Clarissa Vaughn leaves her apartment with the same intention. Flowers, particularly roses, have different connotations for each of the major characters: for Virginia, the roses around the bed of the dead bird signify rest and funereal blankness. Lauras Cake: Laura wants the cake she makes for Dan to fulfill her desire for meaning in her role as a mother, cook, and housewife. Though she knows a cake cannot provide the baker with the same satisfaction that a work of art would provide an artist, she cant help but crave some creative outlet.

The constraint of societal roles (1)

The women of The Hours try to define their lives within the roles that society has set out for them but without sacrificing their own identities. They have varying degrees of comfort with their respective roles, ranging from Clarissa, who thinks occasionally that shes too domestic, to Laura, who feels trapped by the life that shes found herself living.
Clarissa in particular, cannot walk down the street without having a profound experience or revelation: the sight of a woman singing in the park makes her think about the history of the city she loves, while a glimpse of a movie star in her trailer causes her to pause and consider the ways that fame can make people immortal.

The constraint of societal roles (2)

The perception of the world as meaningful is not a purely passive experience. Laura channels her restricted creativity into the domestic act of baking, treating the cake she makes for her husband as if it were a work of art. When the cake fails to live up to expectations, Laura feels not only the frustration of failing at the task but also her failure at finding satisfying outlets for her creative impulses. As a writer, Virginia Woolf has a thoughtful, evaluative eye that gives her an acute understanding of the world around her.

A cultural manifesto

The Hours isnt simply a tragedy of mental illness. Its a manifesto, and its cause is the victimhood of women, the repression of homosexuality, the oppression of family obligations over self-determination, of the life one does not wish over any other sort or even death itself, of patriarchy, even, apparently, of suburbia.

They still have to face the hours

The three main characters in The Hours search for meaning in their lives and evaluate suicide as a way of escaping the problems they face. Virginia, Clarissa, and Laura are incredibly sensitive and perceptive to the world around them. Each moment causes them to critically evaluate how they feel about living, so they constantly consider suicide as a way of evading the oppressive aspects of their lives.

Imprisoned souls

Three women, three lives, three imprisoned, solitary souls in the same cell block.
(The Guardian)

Critical reception (1)

Virginia

Woolf

is

somehow

supposed

to

be

the

grandmotherly ancestor both of women's agony and the means

to cure it. But by intercutting between them, Daldry more or

less persuades us that the three women's stories are atemporal, that they exist alongside each other not in sequence but in

parallel. (The Guardian)

Critical reception (2)

Virginia, Laura and Clarissa demonstrate a metempsychosis, a transmigration of souls; the languor of their private

breakdowns are cousins to each other. Little touches recur like

resonant musical themes. (The Guardian)

References

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2003/feb/14/artsfeatures The Hours, Review by Peter Bradshaw http://www.imdb.com http://www.sparknotes.com Chevalier, Jean, Alain Gheerbrant (2006) Dictionar de simboluri.

THANK YOU!