the hours (film)

a film that ties together the stories of two women in different times, running parallel to virginia woolf's beautiful life. it was extremely moving. for a very long time american-made films have felt shallow and lacking in depth to me. i think after a long time it became one of those films that sticks with me and affects me. a woman is another woman's homeland. that she is. sometimes she becomes inspiration through the books she wrote.. a hundred years later, no less. to her sisters, for whom even a room of one's own is still a luxury.. just like in the film. she draws out the mrs. dalloway inside her.

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in one of the entries someone called it the story of three spoiled broads. how much it wears people down, the way shallow people belittle mental matters, labeling those who perceive the world differently as fragile, spoiled, pathetic. this perception is actually funny, because that's the film's core issue too. virginia woolf, clarissa, and laura are people who struggle to turn chameleon.. but when the matter is womanhood, those who define themselves as outside womanhood think the burdens are part of woman's existence. some shoulder those things handed to them later on and don't make a sound. some can't bear it.. they either pretend to bear it, or construct another fiction, or write.. once again a room of one's own came to my mind. woolf had a very strong stance, it seems. the film chose to reflect that stance a little quietly.

i'm not sure woolf was really as flat a character as this. because we hear a pretty strong voice and presence both in her fiction and in her essays. we do see in the film, though, that woolf brought out everything she witnessed and couldn't make sense of through fiction. the flow of the fiction, and the fact that this flow is actually the pattern in both woolf's life and the other women's lives too..

one morning mrs. dalloway decides she'll buy flowers for herself today. but what about the times when everything is normal yet inwardly doesn't sit right? going into an endless role and captivity.. truth be told, the structure of society has always counseled us toward this. at the slightest conflict the woman is set apart and branded. that's why even if you're bleeding inside, your outside absolutely must smile.. just like laura's smile, the most pain-filled smile i've ever seen.. let her smile, that's enough, because even if she's hurting nobody cares.. while watching the film i often wondered how it would have been if woolf too had known her illness* and maybe had been able to access modern medicine. would she still have walked into that river? maybe she wouldn't have, who knows.. woolf left this world just one year after the discovery of the first modern bipolar medication.

the laura character was, in my opinion, the most heart-piercing side of the film. the fiction transformed the fact that laura, just like virginia, would be heading toward her own death. and laura chose to leave behind and run from a life that was perhaps never asked of her, that she never even asked of herself.. while watching, of course you feel sad. richard's running after his mother, but the woman not being able to breathe in that life either.. a part of you that wants to judge wants to attack easily. just like the way someone who sees laura at the end of the film says, is she the monster.. but what about the monster's story? the film does exactly this, actually.. it lays out before our eyes both the monster's story and the victim's story. the rest is left to our own depth. just like it was said in the entries above, spoiled broads or real broads.. it's left to us to think about that too.

lastly, the jackass who's laura's husband. man, how can a person be this blind. turns out they can, but there you go.. let me go and buy myself a flower from back home too. and let's live. like mrs. dalloway and laura..
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