The Hours is a film not only based on Virginia Woolf’s personal life, but it also explores the themes of her one of her most famous novels, Mrs. Dalloway. Does it succeed? Personally, I thought the film was extremely well done (I mean, it has Meryl Streep). It really helped me understand the effects of mental illness and the oppression of women during various time periods. Especially Laura’s character, played by Julianne Moore, who uses Mrs. Dalloway to escape reality and actually shares several aspects of Clarissa’s life. For example, she finds herself in the role of a common housewife and has to hide her feelings of unhappiness from society. Similar to Clarissa from the novel, Laura finds herself escaping her oppressive surroundings by retreating to Mrs. Dalloway and using it as a literary advisor. If you read my previous blog post, you could make the connection that Laura is using the book to blend fiction with reality. This demonstrates the fragile balance between sanity and insanity and how it affects those we might deem normal. Laura uses the book to as a physical metaphor for her emotions much like Clarissa uses her parties to reflect her thoughts on life. Anyway, it’s a good film but its heavy themes make it a movie that might be hard to watch twice.
After watching the film, it was very surprising to me that I found Laura, not just the creepiest, but also the most depressing, miserable, and tragic character in the movie. Of the 3 suicidal stories in each segment of the film (Woolf, Laura, and Richard), Laura is the only one who decides at the last moment NOT to kill herself. Her subsequent actions (leaving Richard, her husband, and her daughter) not only initially confused me, but angered me when we finally learn the whole story. After such "recovery" how could she desert her family? After more retrospect I realize that these initial reactions were misleading: It was not Laura who caused this, but her "perfect" husband who pretty clearly forced her into this "perfect" marriage in this "perfect" house and into having kids, while completely ignoring all of her emotional and mental problems: To him she still was that "shy" girl in high school who needed someone to swoop into her life to make things better.
ReplyDelete(Sorry that was a lot longer than I meant for it to be!)