“The Hours” — Depression in movies

  • The HoursI recently rented “The Hours” from Net­flix. It’s an ele­gant, poignant weav­ing together of three women’s lives — Vir­ginia Woolf (Nicole Kid­man) circa 1921, a Los Ange­les house­wife named Laura Brown (Julianne Moore) circa 1951 and a New York edi­tor named Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep) circa 2001.

    I’m not going to try to do a decent movie review. I usu­ally don’t have the patience for that, and besides, the thing is prob­a­bly old news to every­one. But there were aspects to their depic­tion of life (or maybe just women’s lives) that seemed to beg a lit­tle closer inves­ti­ga­tion, so I wanted to give it a lit­tle space here.

    The com­mon ele­ment is sad­ness. Sad­ness should get a credit in this movie, and a big one — it could come alpha­bet­i­cally after Moore but before Streep. And we’re not just talk­ing reg­u­lar every­day sad­ness here — it’s that full-blown, no-hope, what-the-F-is-the-point Movie-Sadness that the pub­lic just can’t seem to get enough of (or so one would think, judg­ing from its pre­dom­i­nance in fic­tion and films). Does life for thought­ful peo­ple have to be that flip­pin’ awful?

    There’s not much doubt that for Vir­ginia Woolf it was. I’ve had a kind of fas­ci­na­tion with Woolf that’s based much more on her jour­nals, a relative’s biog­ra­phy and her husband’s mem­oirs than on her writ­ing (which I’ve never had much luck with). There’s no ques­tion that Woolf suf­fered most of her life with the kind of debil­i­tat­ing men­tal ill­ness that we’re all too famil­iar with these days — she appears to be a clas­sic manic-depressive type who had break­downs, hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sions that made her attempt sui­cide more than once. We just have to guess at how much eas­ier her life would’ve been if she’d been pre­scribed lithium instead of the kinds of trendy cures favored in the ’20s (like being locked into a dark room to remove all sen­sory stim­u­la­tion. Sounds hor­ri­ble.).
    And the most con­tem­po­rary fig­ure, Clarissa Vaughn, has enough going on in her life for any­one watch­ing to start get­ting edgy — she’s car­ing for an ex-lover who is dying of AIDS and try­ing to plan a party for him that no one (includ­ing him) seems to be too keen on attend­ing. The immi­nent death of some­one she loved is mak­ing her look back at every­thing she wanted life to be when they were together and every­thing that will pass away with his passing.

    And then we have the house­wife. Laura Brown is a pretty woman in her 20′s with a hus­band who dotes on her and a sen­si­tive lit­tle boy about eight who seems to only want to be around her. And yet, it’s obvi­ous from the first scenes that she’s pro­foundly unhappy and hav­ing a hard time func­tion­ing. Why exactly? The movie never tries to say, and you end up infer­ring that it’s just from the crush­ing weight of being Sub­ur­ban, a malaise that elit­ist culture-producers believe causes whole neigh­bor­hoods to suf­fer, expire and com­mit hate-crimes all the time.

    And what ties all the women together? Well, the book, “Mrs. Dal­loway”, that Woolf is writ­ing (in the ’20s) which Brown is read­ing (in the ’50s) and which Vaughn is, in a way, liv­ing (in ’01) is the clear­est sym­bol. But the strongest tie between them has to be the oncom­ing black­ness of their men­tal state and what they do about it. That’s the amal­gam that holds all of the sto­ries together. Vir­ginia suf­fers and suc­cumbs — Woolf drowned her­self in a river at the age of 59. Laura suf­fers and makes choices (I won’t give any spoil­ers), and maybe she wins and maybe she loses — you’re not really sure (I think she loses). Clarissa suf­fers and has a catthar­tic break­through and in the end, you’re made to believe she has won some­how, though I never did under­stand how. If you blink you miss it, and I must’ve kept blink­ing.
    But some­how the big win­ner is still Movie-Sadnesss. The lack­adaisi­cal attempt at a happy end­ing is rushed through in a moment, but the cam­era dotes lov­ingly at the begin­ning and end­ing of the movie on Woolf’s sui­cide, as if that was the one thing that we could all take strength from. And maybe that’s the way that artistically-minded peo­ple see it — in the spe­cial fea­tured biog­ra­phy of Vir­ginia Woolf on the DVD, her sui­cide was described by friends and biog­ra­phers as “brave” and “coura­geous.” Brave? It’s a sui­cide, not the tak­ing of Nor­mandy Beach. I cer­tainly under­stand the impulse of sym­pa­thetic peo­ple to say that given her pro­longed ill­ness, it was under­stand­able. But mak­ing a hero out of her seems to be mak­ing a hero out of depres­sion, and that’s a bad idea.

    Does it have to be this way? Do great movies, great plays and great works of fic­tion always have to make it seem like life is so com­pletely oner­ous, point­less and unre­lent­ingly dread­ful that the san­est ones among us are the ones who either go insane or kill them­selves?
    That’s what seems to be the case. “The Hours” is a beau­ti­ful movie. It’s well-acted and well-directed, as near as I can judge. But you’ll want to watch some­thing zany with a laugh­track right after it or, bet­ter yet, do a lit­tle reli­gious read­ing. That’s not just an act of denial or con­trari­ness — it’s an act of self-preservation and a real­ity check, like break­ing out a win­dow to keep you from suffocating.


    No related posts.


    November 9th, 2006 | Grace | 12 Comments |

12 Responses and Counting...

  • Deb 11.09.2006

    Okay, sounds like its time for you to rent “Enchanted April”

    I saw the Hours too and was a bit unim­pressed. Maybe because I AM a SAHM and don’t see why they have to por­tray us as lost pup­pies or brain­less child rear­ers. Brown def­i­nitely looses in my book and (okay spoiler alert) drags the rest of the fam­ily down with her. I found Woolf’s char­ac­ter the most com­pelling and would have rather stayed with her the full 2 hours. I enjoyed the orig­i­nal movie bet­ter although Vanessa Red­grave wan­der­ing around con­stantly opin­ing “I’m throw­ing a party!” got a bit irritating.

    Deb

  • Grace

    I *love* Enchanted April. It is the ONLY movie I know of this type that shows how women can redeem them­selves and oth­ers (includ­ing (gasp!) men) rather than being judg­men­tal, detach­ing from loved ones or wal­low­ing in self-pity.

    And yes, I didn’t want to just vent, but I didn’t like Brown’s story either. I don’t know what a SAHM is, but maybe I am one, because I’m sick of Hol­ly­wood act­ing like depres­sion is the nor­mal state of family-types and aban­don­ment is excusable.

  • Word­mama

    SAHM = stay-at-home mom?

  • Grace

    Ohhh. That’s a good guess. Is that right, Deb?

  • Grace

    BTW, ‘Mama, I know it sounds like I’m say­ing this isn’t a good movie, but I would actu­ally rec­om­mend it to you in spite of the flaws I think it has. Heck, all movies have flaws, and the good parts (the writ­ing, act­ing, direc­tion) prob­a­bly out-weigh the bad.

    You know how it is. When a movie is good, the things you want to fix bug you more. I think that’s why it’s become my habit when I rent a DVD I like to check in with the Net­flix mem­ber reviews and find out what the peo­ple who didn’t like it think was wrong with it.

  • Word­mama

    Well, and that’s what makes it so frus­trat­ing — if they can write that well, why can’t they cre­ate some­thing that doesn’t make the world seem like such a grim and mis­er­able place? It’s the same para­dox I have with lit­er­a­ture: the good stuff is stark and the hope­ful stuff is bad. Maybe it’s because the World is all we know first­hand and it’s not exactly a hope­ful place. If we knew enough about Heaven to really write about it, we’d hardly be inter­est­ing in pub­lish­ing fiction.

  • Deb

    Word­mama said:
    “SAHM = stay-at-home mom?”

    Yup– that’s right.

    I’m glad you like “Enchanted April” too. I try to watch it at least every year or two — usu­ally around Feb. or Mar. :)

  • Michelle

    I was read­ing through some of your older post this morn­ing and came across this one about The Hours. I have had to tell my hus­band not to let me watch that movie because every time that I do, I become incred­i­bly depressed for like 24 hours. It is hor­ri­ble! I don’t know what that movie does to me. So I’ve been try­ing to watch “hap­pier” movies more recently. Maybe I’ll have to see Enchanted Apil.

  • Grace

    I under­stand that. We’re very impres­sion­able to movies show­ing this kind of deep melan­choly by peo­ple just going through their lives. It’s when I notice that the char­ac­ters are actu­ally being very self-centered that I start to be able to break the spell. And when I notice how cold they are to oth­ers (what did Laura Brown’s hus­band and son do to deserve being deserted? And what about poor Leonard Woolf?), I start to get very dis­trust­ful of the mood these movies evoke. It’s hard enough to be warm-hearted with­out movies mak­ing that seem shal­low or unreasoning.

  • Leonard Dal­loway

    Hi, I watched this movie long time back. I could never under­stand what Mer­ryl Streep is try­ing to say at the end but some­how I found it beau­ti­ful. per­haps, you could read my first blog entry on http://gpains.blogspot.com/ and let me know what you think is the mean­ing behind a quote from the movie that I had pasted there.

  • Grace

    Leonard:
    Argh — sorry! I thought I got back to you, but I must’ve dreamt it or some­thing. But then, I don’t really have a lot to say — I watched the movie so long ago I couldn’t even remem­ber the end­ing, and look­ing at what I wrote above, it seems clear to me that it left me in the dark, too. So why IS it called The Hours? Beats me. Did any­one else have a good guess?

  • some­one

    Hi,
    I know I’m respond­ing to an old post but I was doing some search­ing for movies like the hours and stum­bled across it. It’s called the hours because that’s all we have in life is hours. The movie is about what we do with the time we have on earth…the impor­tance of our rela­tion­ships etc. It’s kind of the same mes­sage as Amer­i­can Beauty. Give it another shot some­time and watch it through that filter.

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required