This is one of those films that’s neither a personal top 100 fave nor can I seriously call it a “great movie”. It has great moments, and entire great passages, but it loses its way a little too much, and, like many have said, it’s almost too pretentious for its own good. It has a Philip Glass score – for some, that pretty much says it all. That said, it remains a film I can’t overlook, one I’ll watch over and over again. It was between 150-200 on my movie list, and after this movie it’s between 100-150. Maybe it’ll rise. It’s just so damn depressing, though.

The performances are uniformly incredible. I’m a Julianne Moore fan so initially I went for her more, and I still love how she cries on film: I think I remember her saying something on a documentary about Magnolia about how she loves to watch women cry on film herself – when she does it, that love really shows. I think I share it too, there really sometimes is nothing more cinematic than a woman really letting the tears flow, and Julianne Moore does it better than anyone today. Meryl Streep is her usual brilliant self: she’s the one who really has more great actors in her segment to contend with on screen – Ed Harris, Jeff Daniels (probably his most serious, if not best, performance ever), Claire Danes, and, in the end, Julianne Moore – so I guess that might make her more praise-worthy in that she still holds her own. Nicole Kidman is the only one of the three that I never really (and still don’t) would go and see a movie solely on the basis of their presence (not to say she’s not sometimes brilliant). But I think she’s the reason the movie grows on me more with each viewing. She embodies the writer (and I don’t mean specifically Virginia Woolf, I just mean, The Writer, with capital letters, generically) almost scarily. I recognise the way she walks around, eyes down, and yet observing, always thinking, and always annoyed by the very presence of other humans.. it almost scares me how accurate her performance is.

And I know I sort of put down the score earlier, but personally, I have to say, ridiculously artsy as it may be, I love it. That could be my whole summary of the movie. It is absolutely an artsy movie, it’s the kind of movie I could probably pick friends by: if they love The Hours, then they’re almost definitely on my wavelength. But I understand all the things wrong with it, and why people might hate it. But personally, I love it.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2004 at 8:59 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.