The Hours
I can't remember who recommended this movie to me, but so help me if I ever remember they're going to get an ear full! This was one of the driest movies I've watched throughout the 365 Movie Challenge. Okay, driest might be too extreme, I did watch 8 1/2 earlier this year. Only, The Hours isn't foreign and has Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore so I need to hear from fans of this movie. I have to know what was so great about it, because I missed it completely.
I think it's interesting to hear about actors who go to great lengths to find their characters by taking dance classes, or reading and talking to people who knew the person they're portraying intimately. The work Nicole Kidman put into the role, she read all of Viriginia Woolf's personal letters and wore a fake nose, paid off in form of an Academy Award. Meryl Streep, who is well known for going to great lengths to understand and become her characters, listened to certain music she felt would better help her understand the role she was playing. The films director was so impressed with the choice Streep made that the song was used in the films soundtrack. She did however decided not to reread Mrs. Dalloway, the novel written by Virginia Woolf. Streep felt as though her character wouldn't have really understood the book the same way she had when she first read the book in college.
Despite the cast of the film, I just couldn't be more interested in the movie if I had tried. I think Steven Persall said it perfectly in the review he wrote for the St. Petersburg Times.
It is the most finely crafted film of the past year that I never want to sit through again. The performances are flawless, the screenplay is intelligentyly crafted, and the overall mood is relentlessly bleak. It is a film to be admired, not embraced, and certainly not to be enjoyed for any reason other than its expertise. Glacially paced and somberly presented, The Hours demands that viewers be as impressed with the production as the filmmakers are with themselves. Whatever the reason - too gloomy, too slow, too slanted - it is too highbrow and admireably dull for most moviegoers. It's the kind of film that makes critics feel smarter by recommending it, even at the risk of damaging credibility with mainstream audiences who automatically think any movie starring Kidman, Streep, and Moore is worth viewing. The hours will feel like days to them.
Final thoughts: Dear Steven Persall, Let's do lunch. Your final words on the movie were exactly what my thoughts were when the credits rolled.
OFFICIAL COUNT: 165 DOWN 200 TO GO
Next up: The Wild Bunch
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