I don't usually do movie criticism, but it has been a long time since I saw a movie that left me with such a sense of torpid despondency and hopelessness as THE HOURS. My friend Michael insisted that I go see this "wonderfully crafted little gem of a movie called THE HOURS that {had} so much to say about the 'human condition'." That should have been my tip off right there. Why is it that a certain strain of intellectual men (and most women) equate depression (as well as other negative emotions such as sadness and grief) with "deep thought" while happiness and uplifting themes (such as the feeling of ecstatic joy one gets from watching the bad guy get what's coming to him in the form of an exploding hand grenade) are equated with air headed frivolity and vulgar pedestrian taste? Their idea of a perfect intellectual conversation seems to be sitting around in a coffee house somewhere in the West Village gazing down into a cup of steaming Kenyan java while complaining to one another about how life has f*$#ed them over; and what beautiful human beings they once were before an unfeeling world crushed them down. Anyway, what follows was my response to an e-mail from Michael asking me how I liked the movie.
Well Michael, thanks to your prodding, I went to see THE HOURS, staring the lovely and talented Nicole Kidman, and co-starring Meryl Streep; and Julianne Moore. After leaving the theater I filled my coat pockets with heavy rocks and began walking zombie like toward the river so despondent was I at the prospect of having to face all of those joyless hours which the movie made me feel certain lay ahead of me in life. Only the quick thinking and fast talking of a kindly stranger saved me from a watery grave. The movie was beautifully photographed in hushed, muted, sepia tones to accentuate and reflect the somber, gloomy, disconsolate and hopeless mood of its main characters. (Wasn't it H.D. Thoreau who once said that behind their facades of genial conviviality most women lead lives of quiet desperation in a huddled mass yearning to breathe free?) The acting was exceptionally good and, at least to me, I found the actresses to be compelling in their portrayals of women overcome with, at best, unremitting ennui; and at worst, soul numbing despair. The movie had all the cheer of a cancer ward on a bleak and rainy New England afternoon in late December.
Notwithstanding all of the movie's many virtues (and there ARE many), I disliked it for the way it made me feel; and am sorry I went to see it. I should have stayed home and played a nice little uplifting game of Freecell on my computer. For some reason I don't like to be depressed or saddened by things, and very much like to stay out of touch with those particular emotions as much as possible. Years of study and experience have led me to conclude that there is every bit as much to be said for the repression of unpleasant emotions as there is to be said for, say, avoiding contact with hot stove tops. I realize how shallow this is, Michael, but I just can't see DELIBERATELY going to view something that is going to make you feel bad. But that's just one man's opinion; and BEING a man, I recognize that there are certain things that I am simply incapable of understanding.
But I DO understand this: On a chick flick scale of one to ten, this movie hits a perfect ten. From a woman's perspective it has everything: unrequited love, love that has died, crying, death, loss, homosexuality, poetry, pernicious diseases (both mental and physical), infidelity and abandonment, manipulation of others, Edwardian settings, turn of the century costumes, the emptiness of life for women in the pore-liberation 1950's, victimized and exploited women, ineffectual and overcompensating men, hand wringing, educated people in touch with their feelings (and those feelings, without exception, all relating to either loss or depression {or both}), sensitive and intelligent women sacrificing their lives for incognizant men who are, for the most part, oblivious of their needs; or, on the flip side, the hollowness of life for over-achieving career women of the 1990's, and on and on and on.
You can bet your boots, Michael, that the next movie I go see is going to have plenty of jet fighters in it as well as machine guns, explosions, hand grenades, chain saws, cyborgs from the future, a plot that can be written on the back of a matchbook cover; and plenty of long legged big titted women! I know, I know. I'm a knuckle dragging philistine who should be horse-whipped out of town.
Well Michael, thanks to your prodding, I went to see THE HOURS, staring the lovely and talented Nicole Kidman, and co-starring Meryl Streep; and Julianne Moore. After leaving the theater I filled my coat pockets with heavy rocks and began walking zombie like toward the river so despondent was I at the prospect of having to face all of those joyless hours which the movie made me feel certain lay ahead of me in life. Only the quick thinking and fast talking of a kindly stranger saved me from a watery grave. The movie was beautifully photographed in hushed, muted, sepia tones to accentuate and reflect the somber, gloomy, disconsolate and hopeless mood of its main characters. (Wasn't it H.D. Thoreau who once said that behind their facades of genial conviviality most women lead lives of quiet desperation in a huddled mass yearning to breathe free?) The acting was exceptionally good and, at least to me, I found the actresses to be compelling in their portrayals of women overcome with, at best, unremitting ennui; and at worst, soul numbing despair. The movie had all the cheer of a cancer ward on a bleak and rainy New England afternoon in late December.
Notwithstanding all of the movie's many virtues (and there ARE many), I disliked it for the way it made me feel; and am sorry I went to see it. I should have stayed home and played a nice little uplifting game of Freecell on my computer. For some reason I don't like to be depressed or saddened by things, and very much like to stay out of touch with those particular emotions as much as possible. Years of study and experience have led me to conclude that there is every bit as much to be said for the repression of unpleasant emotions as there is to be said for, say, avoiding contact with hot stove tops. I realize how shallow this is, Michael, but I just can't see DELIBERATELY going to view something that is going to make you feel bad. But that's just one man's opinion; and BEING a man, I recognize that there are certain things that I am simply incapable of understanding.
But I DO understand this: On a chick flick scale of one to ten, this movie hits a perfect ten. From a woman's perspective it has everything: unrequited love, love that has died, crying, death, loss, homosexuality, poetry, pernicious diseases (both mental and physical), infidelity and abandonment, manipulation of others, Edwardian settings, turn of the century costumes, the emptiness of life for women in the pore-liberation 1950's, victimized and exploited women, ineffectual and overcompensating men, hand wringing, educated people in touch with their feelings (and those feelings, without exception, all relating to either loss or depression {or both}), sensitive and intelligent women sacrificing their lives for incognizant men who are, for the most part, oblivious of their needs; or, on the flip side, the hollowness of life for over-achieving career women of the 1990's, and on and on and on.
You can bet your boots, Michael, that the next movie I go see is going to have plenty of jet fighters in it as well as machine guns, explosions, hand grenades, chain saws, cyborgs from the future, a plot that can be written on the back of a matchbook cover; and plenty of long legged big titted women! I know, I know. I'm a knuckle dragging philistine who should be horse-whipped out of town.