THE HOURS
THE HOURS
Three women, three cities, three different eras. Richmond, near London, 1923. Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, who won an Oscar for the role and was unkindly mocked by some for her distinctive prosthetic nose) begins work on her next novel, Mrs Dalloway.
At the same time, she is struggling with a nervous breakdown, apathy and a profound sense of confinement.
Suburban Los Angeles, 1951. Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), a pregnant housewife, looks after her husband and son and tends to the family home. At the same time, she is struggling with a nervous breakdown, apathy and a profound sense of confinement.New York, at the beginning of the 21st century. Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) is organising a party in honour of a poet dying of AIDS, who was once her lover. At the same time, she is struggling with a nervous breakdown, apathy and a profound sense of confinement. Although Virginia, Laura and Clarissa are separated by decades, they share a common experience: the realisation that everyday life, however perfect it may appear from the outside, can become a source of profound anguish.
In adapting Michael Cunningham’s supposedly unfilmable, Pulitzer Prize-winning 1998 novel, Stephen Daldry created a moving triptych about the price of living according to other people’s expectations, and the longing to choose a different path, if only once.
Nominated for nine Academy Awards and warmly received by both audiences – as reflected in its box-office success – and critics, THE HOURS (2002) explores the pressures experienced by women regardless of the time and circumstances in which they live. In 2025, the film was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry, a collection of works recognised as part of the cultural heritage of the United States.
Tekst: Rafał Glapiak
