Posted by noa on April 5, 2003, at 23:58:36
I got out today--dinner and a movie with a friend. We saw "The Hours". Omigod, it was awful. Really dreadful. I usually like the slow artsy films that many others don't but this was just nearly intolerable.
The only thing, I hate to say it, was that it was successful in creating the experience of what it is like to live through all the 'hours' of life if you are stuck in the wrong life---I guess I felt like I was stuck in the wrong movie theatre!
I would like to think Virginia Wolfe actually had more personality. I mean, wasn't she supposed to be bipolar? I really would have liked to have seen some mania, because the morose, dullness of her depression went on and on and on, and she seemed to not have any personality otherwise.
Ok, so one more successful effect--the life of Meryl Streep's character seems like it would have been the dream of the Virginia Wolfe character (at least according to how this movie characterized her), only Meryl Streep--the hip, lesbian editor living well in New York, is trapped in her life, too--but not really--she is trapped by her own neurosis, not her life. She goes on and on longing for these imagined perfect moments in her life when she was young blah blah blah. Get over it. Yep, this is the reaction this movie stirred up in me!!
Claire Danes walks in and I thought, great! Someone who is actually alive! Help! Rescue us from this mortuary of a story!
And the 1950's story with Juliane Moore--how two dimensional can they draw that life?
There are exactly 3 moments in the film when I felt some engagement with it. One was the one I mentioned when Claire Danes enters as the only alive person on the scene. Another is one I don't want to give away. The third is when Ed Harris comes alive saying he took Xanax and Ritalin together--and he is rather animated by the combo, it seems! Seriously, it was both the amusment of the med combo that engaged me but also his sudden animation.
But other than these 3 moments, the rest of the movie was totally un-engaging. Slow, dreadfully creeping along. It was less than 2 hours this movie, but seemed like eternity.
OK, I hated it, but I gotta say one more positive thing. The set for where Ed Harris lived was artfully created--a kind of womb to hell, or womb to death. Touche, movie maker.
But it was awful to watch. Acting wise? Kidman was over-affected in her attempts to be this troubled, repressed character. Oh, and the voice--it didn't work for me at all--sounded like Kidman trying too hard to talk low. Streep was ok, but was also over-affected in her typical way, as were some of the folks she did scenes with. Harris was pretty good. Moore was dreadfully undersated--painfully so, which I guess was on purpose because of her repression within the 2-D world of the 50's.
Dreadful is the main word I'd use to describe this movie. And depressing. NOT recommended for anyone who is depressed!
poster:noa
thread:216580
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20030401/msgs/216580.html