Worldview Theater: The Hours
The Servants Quarters movie for February was The Hours, a critically-acclaimed box-office success from 2002. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham, The Hours provides a fractured glimpse into a day in the life of three different women from three different times and places – novelist Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) in 1941, suburban L.A. housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) in 1951, and modern New Yorker Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Street).
Roger Ebert opines that, while these three stories don’t “connect in a neat way,” the film manages to convey the important message that “lives without love are devastated.” Andrew O’Hehir, writing for Salon.com, unequivocally praises the film as a “richly rewarding” piece of “magnificent” “craftsmanship,” with an “exquisite” “appreciation of the drama, terror and tragedy of everyday life”. O’Hehir even goes so far as to embrace the notion (suggested by the dramatic portrayal of Virginia Woolf’s death) that suicide not only need not be “tragic and desperate” but can be an act of “nobility.” While I agree that The Hours represents excellent craftsmanship, I find little or no evidence of nobility in its characters.
What about you? What did you think of The Hours? What is the meaning of life according to its makers? What is the nature of humankind? Is there such a thing as right and wrong? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Comments
Well,I just watched the movie and after my first reaction was to call my mom. :)
The movie was deep and rich and my mind is still processing. However, here are a few short thoughts.
The 50's child: My heart ached for the child of the 50's mother. He was so young and so insightful and the part where he just had to let his mom know that he loved her. Broke my heart - partly because this resonates with my personal childhood story. Our personal decisions as mothers, sisters, friends and citizens last parents last far beyond ourselves. Our choices matter.
Who are we living to please or serve? The theme of the hostess and having it all together - hiding behind confidence. Knowing the pain each of us carries.
Is life temporary? Is this all there is? What about heaven? What is the purpose of mankind?
Themes of sexuality and broken relationships...
This movie certainly displayed a broken world with broken people and left me thinking about the cross.
Posted by: Kayla | March 7, 2007 01:15 AM
Kayla, you're right. I hadn't thought about how The Hours reminds us that "our personal decisions . . . last far beyond ourselves." The effects of our decisions indeed do reverberate for generations.
I think this principle is easier for me to see when, as in The Hours, the decision is a poor one, leading to destructive consequences. I need to learn better to take that notion and apply it to the righteous decisions that we see people make. Ought we not be able to discern just as easily the blessings that flow down through the generations? Are they any less vivid or real?
What might The Hours tell us about the Lord's ability to transform families, even cultures, through one person's life?
Posted by: Ramsey Wilson | March 7, 2007 10:40 AM
Okay, here are some of my rambling thoughts:
What I find interesting is how popular this movie was. Obviously it strikes a chord that resonates with our present culture. And something in the film must have resonated in me, or else I wouldn’t have kept thinking about it for days afterward! So what
-Many of us feel that we are not living, although we are living. Our lives are made up of the hours that we pass each day. Yet could we pass these hours, -breathing and acting- and still not live? I believe this is a deep fear that resonates with many people, especially in this culture: Might we come to the close of our lives and find that life has eluded us?
Or perhaps what resonates is the idea that we might be living for something else, (or for someone else as the case is in The Hours,) and when we lose this temporal being we might find that we have lost all reason to live. And then we will have to face our own fears and emptiness. The characters of Meryl Streep and Virginia Wolfe’s husband are so defined by their relationship to a fellow human that their own concept of living does not extend beyond these others’ lives. What would their lives be about without that person’s presence?
Life: Each of us lives and breathes, but what do we live for? And do we even truly live? The Hours tells us that to live is to seek our happiness and to exercise our choices over life and living. Even death is life in suicide, when chosen for the sake of living. (Virginia and Ed Harris die so that the others might live more fully.)
I think that for the souls that resonate with characters in the film and their search for life, the ending does not satisfy, (even for the secular audience.) The morals of ‘seeking one’s own happiness,’ and ‘exercising choice to live –or die,’ are empty, and anyone who has tried this knows that. Which is why The Hours is such a thoroughly depressing movie! It describes well the profound brokenness experienced in this world, but offers only the band-aid prescription that this world can offer without a Redeemer.
But as I said, I did resonate with characters in the film. Have you ever had an ‘aha’ moment, when you realized that you don’t have to be everything that everyone is saying you should be and expecting you to be? I had one the other day. In a moment of clarity I saw all of the voices, all of the pressures, all of the expectations –but I was looking down over them; They held no sway over me. And I felt alive and free. And within that realm of freedom, God showed me my heart and my passion and let me run forward with these. And there is the rub, life is found not in forsaking others to attend to yourself, but in attending to God.
Posted by: Bethany | March 8, 2007 12:08 AM
Great insights, Bethany. I especially liked your last thought: "life is found not in forsaking others to attend to yourself, but in attending to God." Christ frees us from sin and self so that we may find joy serving Him; true freedom is freedom to serve.
I have a question. You observe that The Hours "offers only the band-aid prescription that this world can offer without a Redeemer." What precisely do you think the filmmakers are offering?
Posted by: Ramsey Wilson | March 8, 2007 07:11 AM