The Hours
Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep star in different stories all connected by one Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf (Kidman) is in the midst of writing Mrs. Dalloway in the solitude of an estate far from London, where she truly wants to be. But the madness she's experiencing forced her husband to move her away from the city in the hopes of settling her. Laura Brown (Moore) is in the midst of reading Mrs. Dalloway. She's a depressed mother of one with another on the way. She doesn't like the role she's playing in life and obviously isn't able to function well in this role, but indecision clouds how she will decide what to do in the future. Clarissa Vaughan (Streep) is seemingly in the midst of being Mrs. Dalloway. Like Dalloway, Clarissa is hosting a party, this one for her long time friend, Richard Brown (Ed Harris), an AIDS-inflicted poet who has just won a prestigious award. But as her story progresses, she moves along as if absolutely nothing will come of it and soon questions why she's giving a party in the first place.

I'll have to admit, I found the first half of the film awfully boring. I didn't feel any connection with the material director Stephen Daldry was presenting though I did like the score, done by Philip Glass. But like a rush of water coming downstream, by the second half, I got caught up with the characters and realized their characters are so much deeper than one would seem. But as depressed as each of them are, the questioning of what it means to be alive in the world continues and each character handles it differently, all with consequences for the people around them. Instead of focusing on the story, which would be spoiled if I said anything more, this movie will be remembered for the brilliant acting done by Kidman, Streep, and Harris, even though he only had a limited supporting role. While Moore's performance was strong as well, she always seems to play strong female characters. 3 stars