I haven't read the book, or anything by Virginia Woolf, so my impressions may differ from viewers who have read _The Hours_ or Woolf's writings.
The movie has three parallel stories. One is set in the 1920s, and focuses on the historic Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, difficult to recognize with the prosthetic nose and frumpy clothing), with her husband (Stephen Dillane) as the only important supporting character. Another is set in the 1950s, and focuses on a woman (Julianne Moore) who appears to have a happy life situation, but is nonetheless visibly melancholy. The third is set in modern New York City, and focuses on a woman (Meryl Streep) who is a close friend of a man (Ed Harris, also difficult to recognize) who is suffering gravely from AIDS.
I found the historic story line dull from start to end, with the exception of the opening scene, where Woolf drowns herself, hinting that the remainder of her story line will tell us more about _why_ she eventually kills herself. Her story line showed us _that_ she was miserable to the point of suicide, and indicates that she's suffering from what we'd now call clinical depression, but I never felt like the movie took us inside her suffering. Instead, it was like watching someone suffer, without ever understanding the misery or being able to do anything about it. I could feel empathy with her husband, but I felt like the movie was trying to take us inside _her_ without success, rather than trying to show us her suffering from her husband's viewpoint.
The modern story was similarly dull during the beginning of the movie, but got more involving as it progressed. In the beginning, we could see that the sick man, a noted poet, was miserable and depressed because his illness was getting worse in spite of his medicine. Streep's character was putting her life on hold emotionally in her efforts to comfort him. She was planning a big party to celebrate the poet's receipt of a major poetry award. The story became more interesting with the introduction of some supporting characters, but only really took off when Streep's character went to pick up the poet for the party. That set interesting events into motion, and brought in a very interesting supporting character.
The only part of story that had me hooked from the start was the one set in the 1950s. In that one, Moore's character was gloomy, for no obvious reason -- she didn't even appear to be clinically depressed or otherwise unhealthy, mentally or physically. Her children were the envy of a friend who visited her. Her husband seemed to be nice, and they appeared to be living a comfortable life. The story grabbed me by setting up the nature of her unhappiness a mystery, and the story stayed interesting by showing what she did as a result of her sadness.
Now that I've complained about how dull more than half of the story was, I have to praise some things that were good about the movie. The acting was outstanding, and deserves lots of award nominations, even the great acting that went to waste in the dull parts of the movie. The three female leads were amazing, and Ed Harris was impressive too. The directing was impressive in a number of ways, notably the cuts between story lines, but when the directing technique is more interesting than some of the story lines, the directing should have kept looking for a way to keep the story itself interesting.
I usually don't notice the score, but in this case I noticed it, found it a bit intrusive. It sounded like every other Phil Glass composition I have heard, which might be interesting a few times, outside the context of a movie, but didn't work for me in this case. If you like Phil Glass, you might like the score separately, but I would not have chosen it for this movie.
I left out some giant spoilers, because they would not make this review more interesting for those who aren't seeing the movie. If you think you might see the movie, be careful to avoid spoilers from other sources, because they're likely to hurt this movie more than most.
The movie has three parallel stories. One is set in the 1920s, and focuses on the historic Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, difficult to recognize with the prosthetic nose and frumpy clothing), with her husband (Stephen Dillane) as the only important supporting character. Another is set in the 1950s, and focuses on a woman (Julianne Moore) who appears to have a happy life situation, but is nonetheless visibly melancholy. The third is set in modern New York City, and focuses on a woman (Meryl Streep) who is a close friend of a man (Ed Harris, also difficult to recognize) who is suffering gravely from AIDS.
I found the historic story line dull from start to end, with the exception of the opening scene, where Woolf drowns herself, hinting that the remainder of her story line will tell us more about _why_ she eventually kills herself. Her story line showed us _that_ she was miserable to the point of suicide, and indicates that she's suffering from what we'd now call clinical depression, but I never felt like the movie took us inside her suffering. Instead, it was like watching someone suffer, without ever understanding the misery or being able to do anything about it. I could feel empathy with her husband, but I felt like the movie was trying to take us inside _her_ without success, rather than trying to show us her suffering from her husband's viewpoint.
The modern story was similarly dull during the beginning of the movie, but got more involving as it progressed. In the beginning, we could see that the sick man, a noted poet, was miserable and depressed because his illness was getting worse in spite of his medicine. Streep's character was putting her life on hold emotionally in her efforts to comfort him. She was planning a big party to celebrate the poet's receipt of a major poetry award. The story became more interesting with the introduction of some supporting characters, but only really took off when Streep's character went to pick up the poet for the party. That set interesting events into motion, and brought in a very interesting supporting character.
The only part of story that had me hooked from the start was the one set in the 1950s. In that one, Moore's character was gloomy, for no obvious reason -- she didn't even appear to be clinically depressed or otherwise unhealthy, mentally or physically. Her children were the envy of a friend who visited her. Her husband seemed to be nice, and they appeared to be living a comfortable life. The story grabbed me by setting up the nature of her unhappiness a mystery, and the story stayed interesting by showing what she did as a result of her sadness.
Now that I've complained about how dull more than half of the story was, I have to praise some things that were good about the movie. The acting was outstanding, and deserves lots of award nominations, even the great acting that went to waste in the dull parts of the movie. The three female leads were amazing, and Ed Harris was impressive too. The directing was impressive in a number of ways, notably the cuts between story lines, but when the directing technique is more interesting than some of the story lines, the directing should have kept looking for a way to keep the story itself interesting.
I usually don't notice the score, but in this case I noticed it, found it a bit intrusive. It sounded like every other Phil Glass composition I have heard, which might be interesting a few times, outside the context of a movie, but didn't work for me in this case. If you like Phil Glass, you might like the score separately, but I would not have chosen it for this movie.
I left out some giant spoilers, because they would not make this review more interesting for those who aren't seeing the movie. If you think you might see the movie, be careful to avoid spoilers from other sources, because they're likely to hurt this movie more than most.