Personally, when all these elements are right, I'm completely satisfied.
Again, grazie! That pleases me greatly to hear.
Since I was writing BtVS fanfics at the time I associated Buffy to Clarissa (Meryl Streep's character) rather than Laura.
Interesting - and I see what you mean about taking care of everyone (To be really simplistic avout it, Clarissa has a daughter - Dawn; and her ex-lover who is dying - Spike; while her current lover really doesn't need "taking care of" except perhaps emotionally; all the love and time and energy Clarissa devotes to her ex-lover represents love and time and care she's not giving to her current lover. And I don't recall her name - shame on me, although I love Allison Hanney in the role - but I don't recall that she ever complains (much) in the book or the movie. In the movie esp she's rather quietly long-suffering. We can see that Laura also has to take care of others (her husband and son); unlike Buffy however, Laura leaves her family behind and our culture would judge her a monster for doing so (whereas it's quite common for husbands/fathers to do so), but I don't think the movie judges her? It's been a while since I've seen it. Virginia Woolf on the other hand is the reverse - people are taking care of her, to the point of smothering.
I was so electified by Nicole Kidman's performance, and by what the character of "Virginia" had to say to me, that I barely noticed the other two women to be honest. I think it was entirely to do with my emotional state, but it was one of two or three times I've watched a movie and realized that somehow I was not quite the same person at the end of it as I was at the beginning. (The Piano was the other and to a lesser extent, Sophie's Choice.) The Hours was more deeply personal for me than those other examples though (during the credits I buried my face in my hands and sobbed because I felt as though my heart was being split down the center with a rusty butter knife. Or a soup spoon - dragged slowly and painfully from top to bottom. And I couldn't understand why. My poor friend who went with me - I wonder if I freaked her out a bit.)
Meryl's performance was the least of the three, for me; it felt too "acted" (but other people have said the same of NK's as well. YMMV) I didn't connect with her at all. (And, the timid kiss between her and Janney? Eh. They should have watched Willow and Tara's two kisses beforehand.)
Laura I appreciated more in hindsight, but I didn't really connect with her until I read the novel. Then she became my main focus and interest, but in part because we learn a bit more about her there. She was a WW2 war bride from Italy, dark and "foreign" compared to her WASP neighbors, in a strange land trying to fit in, and so her isolation was of a different order than the film. Although Laura's angst in the movie is far more "existential", unnameable; she isn't a foreigner, a "stranger in a strange land" but she feels like one anyway and can't put a name to it, can't understand why. I actually think on the balance I find that more interesting.
Both the book and the movie have things to recommend them although I find them both slightly overrated, too. I wouldn't have thought the book rated a Pulitzer Prize. The parallels to the novel "Mrs Dalloway" that are implicit in the film are explicit in the book; the first chapter is rewritten in imitation of Woolf, which I found annoying because I read Mrs Dalloway before The Hours, and the technique came off as highbrow fanfiction. Whereas the chapters dealing with Laura are much more heartfelt, IMO.
BTW & OT - I'm trying to figure out why your icons, when they show up on my LJ, have both your screen-names and mine underneath them. I'd never noticed that elsewhere.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2013-03-01 07:16 pm (UTC)Again, grazie! That pleases me greatly to hear.
Since I was writing BtVS fanfics at the time I associated Buffy to Clarissa (Meryl Streep's character) rather than Laura.
Interesting - and I see what you mean about taking care of everyone (To be really simplistic avout it, Clarissa has a daughter - Dawn; and her ex-lover who is dying - Spike; while her current lover really doesn't need "taking care of" except perhaps emotionally; all the love and time and energy Clarissa devotes to her ex-lover represents love and time and care she's not giving to her current lover. And I don't recall her name - shame on me, although I love Allison Hanney in the role - but I don't recall that she ever complains (much) in the book or the movie. In the movie esp she's rather quietly long-suffering. We can see that Laura also has to take care of others (her husband and son); unlike Buffy however, Laura leaves her family behind and our culture would judge her a monster for doing so (whereas it's quite common for husbands/fathers to do so), but I don't think the movie judges her? It's been a while since I've seen it. Virginia Woolf on the other hand is the reverse - people are taking care of her, to the point of smothering.
I was so electified by Nicole Kidman's performance, and by what the character of "Virginia" had to say to me, that I barely noticed the other two women to be honest. I think it was entirely to do with my emotional state, but it was one of two or three times I've watched a movie and realized that somehow I was not quite the same person at the end of it as I was at the beginning. (The Piano was the other and to a lesser extent, Sophie's Choice.) The Hours was more deeply personal for me than those other examples though (during the credits I buried my face in my hands and sobbed because I felt as though my heart was being split down the center with a rusty butter knife. Or a soup spoon - dragged slowly and painfully from top to bottom. And I couldn't understand why. My poor friend who went with me - I wonder if I freaked her out a bit.)
Meryl's performance was the least of the three, for me; it felt too "acted" (but other people have said the same of NK's as well. YMMV) I didn't connect with her at all. (And, the timid kiss between her and Janney? Eh. They should have watched Willow and Tara's two kisses beforehand.)
Laura I appreciated more in hindsight, but I didn't really connect with her until I read the novel. Then she became my main focus and interest, but in part because we learn a bit more about her there. She was a WW2 war bride from Italy, dark and "foreign" compared to her WASP neighbors, in a strange land trying to fit in, and so her isolation was of a different order than the film. Although Laura's angst in the movie is far more "existential", unnameable; she isn't a foreigner, a "stranger in a strange land" but she feels like one anyway and can't put a name to it, can't understand why. I actually think on the balance I find that more interesting.
Both the book and the movie have things to recommend them although I find them both slightly overrated, too. I wouldn't have thought the book rated a Pulitzer Prize. The parallels to the novel "Mrs Dalloway" that are implicit in the film are explicit in the book; the first chapter is rewritten in imitation of Woolf, which I found annoying because I read Mrs Dalloway before The Hours, and the technique came off as highbrow fanfiction. Whereas the chapters dealing with Laura are much more heartfelt, IMO.
BTW & OT - I'm trying to figure out why your icons, when they show up on my LJ, have both your screen-names and mine underneath them. I'd never noticed that elsewhere.