The Hours (2002)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 186
Fresh: 150 | Rotten: 36
The movie may be a downer, but it packs an emotional wallop. Some fine acting on display here.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 40
Fresh: 32 | Rotten: 8
The movie may be a downer, but it packs an emotional wallop. Some fine acting on display here.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 82,885
My Rating
Movie Info
Three women, separated by a span of nearly 80 years, find themselves weathering similar crises, all linked by a single work of literature in this film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham. In 1923, Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is attempting to start work on her novel Mrs. Dalloway, in which she chronicles one day in the life of a troubled woman. But Virginia has demons of her own, and she struggles to overcome the depression and suicidal impulses that have
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Cast
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Meryl Streep
Clarissa Vaughn -
Julianne Moore
Laura Brown -
Nicole Kidman
Virginia Woolf -
Ed Harris
Richard Brown -
Toni Collette
Kitty -
Claire Danes
Julia Vaughan -
Jeff Daniels
Louis Waters -
Stephen Dillane
Leonard Woolf -
Allison Janney
Sally Lester -
John C. Reilly
Dan Brown -
Miranda Richardson
Vanessa Bell -
Eileen Atkins
Barbara in the flower s... -
Margo Martindale
Mrs. Latch -
Linda Bassett
Nelly Boxall -
Jack Rovello
Richie Brown -
Michael Culkin
Doctor -
Carmen De Lavallade
Clarissa's Neighbor -
Colin Stinton
Hotel Clerk -
Daniel Brocklebank
Rodney -
Christian Coulson
Ralph Partridge -
George Loftus
Quentin Bell -
Lyndsay Marshal
Lottie Hope -
Charley Ramm
Julian Bell -
Sophie Wyburd
Angelica Bell
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The Hours Trailer & Photos
All Critics (200) | Top Critics (41) | Fresh (156) | Rotten (37) | DVD (30)
David Hare's screen adaptation reduces Woolf and her art to a set of feminist stances and a few plot points, without reference to style or form.
Top CriticA boldly realised, affecting work.
A puzzling and forbidding strangeness.
The film manages to be cinematic and transporting even though we generally spend most of our time listening to people talk to one another (and themselves).
The film actually improves on Cunningham's novel, thanks to gorgeous cinematography, a deft script by playwright David Hare ... a mournful, melodious but never intrusive score by Philip Glass and a superb cast.
A compelling, moving film that respects its audience and its source material.
Smart, thoughtful movie for older teens and up.
Daldry's screen version is well acted but too literal, failing to convey the complexity or the lyricism of Cunningham's seminal novel.
More than just Oscar bait; it's a veritable Oscar bait and tackle shop.
The Hours totally engrosses me... It somehow deepens the [book's] themes to see the bodies, scrutinize the faces, smell the money, feel the flatness of the screen.
The film's true star is its script.
Life may or may not be everything it's cracked up to be. This movie most definitely is.
If this movie is about how some choose not to live, it's also just as much about why others choose to go on.
Does make you think, but it doesn't entertain.
'In a sublime collaboration, David Hare and Stephen Daldry have created a delicate atmosphere of inchoate sadness.'
It works like the best poetry, giving us room to explore ideas and issues instead of narrowing itself to simple moral lessons.
Lost we become in story telling that emphasizes cuts and coincidences, leaving serious characterization gaps.
Audience Reviews for The Hours
Super Reviewer
Those ladies are: Virginia Woolfe herself, working on the novel in 1923, 1950s California housewife Laura Brown who is enamored by the book, and Clarissa Vaughn- a New Yorker planning a party in 2001, who is basically the embodiment of the novel's title character.
What I liked about the film is the structure. Aside from the opening and closing scenes which bookend things, the movie takes place in a single day in each of the time periods, alternating back and forth between them. Also, there's a lot of parallel action and matching cutting going on to link all the stories with one another, one example being each lady waking up at roughly around the same time.
Thematically, this film is all about depression, loss, suicide, and some LGBT leanings. It's not an easy film to watch, and it sure isn't uplifting, but it is fairly compelling. That said, the film is rather slow, and, while it is interesting, it's didn't grab me as much as it probably should have, or as much as I thought it might. I wasn't totally bored, but I wasn't mesmerized, either.
We do get a strong cast here, populated by the likes of Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Ed Harris, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, John C. Reilly, Toni Collette, and Allison Janney among others, and, as you'd expect, they deliver when it comes to the acting. Kidman was the only one who actually walked away with an award, and she is really good as Woolf, but I personally really liked Moore. Of the men, Reilly was probably my favorite, although Jeff Daniels fares pretty well, too.
The film is shot fairly decently, and the score by Phillip Glass, despite being characteristically repetitive, is quite good and very fitting.
In the end, the film is overrated and kind of a drag, but the set up is intriguing, and the performances are what ultimately save it, so, even though it will depress the dickens out of you, consider giving it a watch.
Super Reviewer
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- Virginia Woolf: I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.
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- Virginia Woolf: Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.
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- Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway said she'd buy the flowers herself.
- Laura Brown: [reading aloud] Mrs. Dalloway said she'd buy the flowers herself.
- Clarissa Vaughn: [shouting] Sally, I think I'll buy the flowers myself!
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- Clarissa Vaughn: I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.
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- Virginia Woolf: Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.
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- Virginia Woolf: Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.
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Foreign Titles
- The Hours - Von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit (DE)
