By Michael Cunningham - The Hours: A Novel (12/16/99)

This is one of my favorite movies, though looking back, it strangely shows three lives intertwined who happen to be "women who love women." Not the overall theme here, I know, but it seemed such a touch that it had to be that, and maybe because of that it wasn't as widely accepted or honored. I happen to like this movie, not for that, but for the places it takes you, the dialogue that seemed unlike what movies previously had been. It inspired me to write my own, of two characters based on myself. The story here has changed I am sure, from the novel, because there were times that the novel wasn't like the movie....But if the story inspired you even a little, I would recommend this. If you happen to write, it would allow you a try at adapting your writes into screenplay. I find it shameful that people are so adamantly opposed to homosexuals these days. I don't know what set it off actually, but I didn't think anything of the lesbian topics herein. To say it was even a topic is an overstatement. It is a casual representation of women, respectfully done! It was also a representation of different eras. The present day era was that of NYC after the attacks, if I remember correctly.

If you don’t read Woolfe’s Mrs. Dalloway, you don’t realize how much the author “borrowed”. Ending seems contrived, but Cunningham does write beautifully in the 'stream of consciousness’ style.

beautifully written, creative story line that deserves the acclaims it has received— if I may humbly say so.

the book is great quality.

Got this for a class, and Ioved it. It is beautifully written.

For obvious reasons Hollywood seldom has made real downer movies. This is one of the great downer movies of all time, but it is a literate, adult, thoughtful, and a serious film worthy of our attention. The famous British playwright David Hare, with nine Broadway plays to his credit, wrote the brilliant, innovative screenplay from Michael Cunningham's acclaimed novel. Cinema reaches the viewer's emotions faster and more tellingly and viscerally than the novelist can.There is a complex beginning to the movie with a lot of imaginative cross-cutting. I think the screenplay enhances and surpasses the richness of the novel.The movie tells three parallel, confluent stories with similar incidents about three women. The stories become more charged when they are juxtaposed and crosscut in the film. Two of the women, Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown, are mentally unstable and suicidal. The third, Clarissa, has one of the most stressful days of her life. She is called Mrs. Dalloway by her close friend Richard, a man suffering from the last throes of AIDS. Both Virginia Woolf and Richard hear intrusive, devastating inner voices. Clarissa is an active lesbian, while Virginia and Laura demonstrate lesbian tendencies. Clarissa, like Mrs. Dalloway, is planning a party. Clarissa's is to honor her friend Richard, and both spend their days preparing for the parties. As in "Mrs. Dalloway" the passing of the hours is crucial to the plot. The characters find that "facing the hours" is an enormous challenge. Laura is planning a small birthday party for her husband with her son Richie. Laura, reading "Mrs. Dalloway," in her imagination she sees Virginia drowning. This movie is not about normal people in stressful situations; it is about stress-filled people trying to cope with normal life. The dialogue is crisp with short naturalistic give and take. Virginia Woolf is writing her novel in 1923. She desperately wants to return to the life of London, "the violent jolt of the capital." The cuts back and forth from past to future, from one character's story to the other are fraught with associations and meaning. In the movie Virginia's husband Leonard asks his wife why someone has to die in her novel. She says, "Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more." Who does she decide must die in her novel? "The poet will die. The visionary." Richard is a poet too.These characters are linked in the movie emotionally, psychically, and symbolically, all of it done in triumphant fashion.Clarissa at the end of the movie is at peace, but the movie's coda brings us back to disharmony. The movie began with Virginia in 1941 and jolts us back there before the final credits.