The Hours is a 1998 novel written by Michael Cunningham centered around the perspectives of three woman all affected by the classic novel written by Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway. The three titular women exist in three separate time periods yet are connected by their livelihood problems and mental struggles with keeping their composure. The book covers several themes of repression, mental illness, closeted sexuality, and the importance a single day can have on a person’s life. Featuring several elements and techniques that tie back to the original Virginia novel and the story was noticeable enough for it to be turned into its own feature film with plenty of star power behind it. The movie of question created in 2002 proved to be a highly successful venture. The story of The Hours focuses on three women in three different time periods; Clarissa Vaughan (played by Meryl Streep) in 2001 New York, Laura Brown (played by Julianne Moore) in 1950s California, and Virginia Woolf (played by Nicole Kidman) in 1920s England. Vaughan is responsible for hosting a party for her aid-stricken ex-husband, Brown suffers through an unhappy marriage which she discovers while preparing her husband’s birthday, and Woolf struggles with her depression while writing the book that all three lady’s will be connected to throughout the movie. Critical reception for the movie was largely positive and was nominated over nine times at the Academy Awards, including best picture. The movie seems to capture a lot of the strengths of the book, but all of these strengths don’t necessarily lead to a fully engaging movie. While on the surface, there’s a lot of things about this movie that work, something throughout the movie just doesn’t click when it comes to keeping its audience invested.

The story is told pretty closely to how its done in the book, which is in a very indirect and jumps back and forth between the three separate time periods and lead women. Cunningham did this as a homage to Woolf’s style of writing which was also not restricted in how it was structured. Many of Woolf’s techniques were utilised in creating The Hours novel, helping the source material feel all the more authentic when the rhythm of writing feels remarkably similar. One of the best parts of this movie is its connectivity; the way that each story is combined together in both a physical as well as an emotional level is portrayed very well here. It never gimmicky or overly done, several moments often mirror events from the others life without having to spell it out, and the ways in which in the story unfolds itself through three separate but connected narratives is pretty impressive. The struggles come in how the actual substance of the movie is laid out; the story seems to feature a lot of interesting themes and deep ideas that are somewhat featured in the film, yet it isn’t portrayed in the most interesting way that it could have. In the book, it seems to use a ‘stream-of-consciousness’ style, where flowing thoughts and perceptions of the leads are depicted like they occurred in real life; while this may have been disorientating to do, it comes back to a common problem with book-to-movie adaptations in which characters and emotions aren’t fleshed out as strongly because they don’t have the time a book does to overly describe a character’s thoughts. A lot of the symbolism in the movie feels like it can be really powerful yet its just missing that extra step forward to be noticeable enough. The director himself does a really great job juggling all these story’s together without it feeling poorly paced.

The star power that this movie has is very impressive. Even outside of the fact that the three women in the movie are played by very famous actresses, the rest of the cast is filled with famous names as well: Ed Harris, Miranda Richardson, John C Reilly, Toni Collette, Claire Danes, etc. All these names are pretty choices for this type of movie and overall, everybody does a pretty impressive job. Regarding the three leading ladies, Nicole Kidman was the one that left the most impact mainly because she had the best story presence and intrigue around her. While Julianne and Meryl were good and each had some solid moments in their story, Kidman’s felt like it had the best material to work off of as well as the best visual symbolism and best atmosphere, being in 1920s London. Meryl Streep’s portion of the story was a nice mirror of the story Virginia Woolf was creating, but otherwise it wasn’t that engaging, and Julianne Moore’s story felt very disconnected from the rest and was the most shallow out of all of them, with the least amount of explanation and emotion put into it. Most of the side actors are pretty good in their bit roles.

The presentation for the film was pleasant but not overly noticeable. As previously mentioned, the book can use a lot more visual symbolism because of its written format allowing the creativity to go wild and turn a regular looking area and make it more interesting. The movie does this slightly in how it portrays the separate time periods; the 20s is the best design with the building designs, human attire and overall presence feeling pretty close to the time period, the 50s was not the most impressive and could have been a lot more interesting looking, and the 2000s was honest and realistic but also not taken to that much of an extreme. The cinematography in moments feels like its trying to say something with how its angled and framed, yet because the symbolism in this movie is a little too miss-able, it’s hard to fully gauge what its trying to say. The writing in many areas feels very book-inspired in that the dialogue doesn’t always feel authentic and feels very much like a script which can take people out of the moment in instances. This is mainly felt in Meryl Streep’s segments where there’s a lot of monologues that don’t really sound realistic at all. Moore and Kidman seem to be work around this okay as Moore doesn’t suffer from any in her segment and Kidman’s environment feels like its suits that kind of talking. Phillip Glass’ composition of the movie does feature some very nice, orchestrated pianos and tunes that provide a nice piece that feels poetic and alive in its rhythm. It’s nothing overly memorable, but its nice none-the-less.

The Hours is very clearly a movie that is built specifically for the type of audience that will get behind it. Overall, the movie has very few noticeable flaws, but its style and story substance isn’t built for everybody and some just aren’t going to get into this kind of stuff. The movie, and therefore the book, has a great concept in mixing three stories together and that is portrayed nicely here as well. The acting is good, the music is nice, and nothing stands out as overly awful, but the story’s actual material doesn’t always feel perfectly portrayed and could have been a lot more visually interesting. Overall, it’s a good movie but not one that’s going to work for everybody. A serious downer, but not without intelligence, check it out and see if this is a movie that is worth spending hours on.