the Hours

It turns out my best time to read is while traveling, otherwise there is just too much distraction in my regular life, the largest threat being WoW, and the endless mindless clicking when I am tired but still refuse to go to bed. And the thing is when it takes too long to fly, reading is really the best way to kill time.

Flying from GMT+8 to GMT+3 does not seem like a long flight, however, on the way back from Tel Aviv, it is an 11-hour flight, 3-hour transition at the Bangkok airport, then another 4-hour flight back to Taipei. So my flight left Tel Aviv at 11pm, and it was past midnight when I finally went home. It is a full-day flight.

Finally I finished the Hours on the flight. I have its DVD version, and have watched all the special features on the disc. The producer has done a terrific job putting all the features together, including interview with Virginia Wolf’s nephews talking about Virginia, and interview with the screenplay writer. It is so much better than just simple interviews with the actors to know how they feel about the movie and the interaction among them (ok, this is included too). There is so much more.

I love the movie. No doubt about it. However, I am not absolutely clear what ‘the hours’ means in the movie. The screenplay writer also talks about it a lot in the interview, saying that we live in the hours, which still does not explain what the author is trying to tell us, especially when it is used as the title of book (or the original title of Mrs. Dalloway, written by Virginia Wolf). Chinese translation of the title is even more confusing, which can be translated as “all the times” (What am I doing? Translation of translation?)

After having finished the book, I realized he is talking about we live at the present time, aka at the present hour, and there is more time, aka more hours, ahead of us. For Virginia, there are hours of darkness, voices, and hours of self awareness, of being herself, hours of desire to escape from the country and live in London haunting the streets. For Laura, those are hours of staying in the hotel just to read in the room, away from her son, her house, hours to be home to be the housewife and mother, hours in her later life witting in Clarissa’s house waiting for the time when she can be alone and go to bed. We all have hours to live in, like it or not, hours to come. Some strive to find a way out; some are content of what they have and what they do, the blessed of all.

There are many differences between the movie and the novel. Novel is a good way to express emotions, what we feel about a funeral of a thrush, buried with a circle of rose, being temporarily beautiful and peaceful but possibly dug out by shovel the next morning when the garden is attended the next morning, to show Virginia’s thinking process and how and why she feels the desire to flee to London, even just for few hours, at the risk of her husband’s anger, how she decides to go home with her husband, when she has already had a ticket in London in her pocket, but decides to keep it secret. In the movie, on the contrary, a major conflict of Virginia and her husband at the station is designed, in which she claims she is dying in this town, even the slightest being has its own right to say what is good for itself, while her husband was angry and worried that she had a history of hearing voices and committing suicide, but ended up agreeing to move back to London. This is probably my favorite scene of the Hours, and even of Nicole Kidman. She is so delicate and beautiful in the way that she looks approachable and human, not just a pretty blond, who looks cold and faraway.

Kiss is also a major thing in the movie. Mrs. Dalloway loves a woman in her early years, with whom she shares a kiss that she would never forget. Virginia has a kiss with her sister, Vanessa, an un-innocent one, as Virginia calls it. Laura has a kiss with Kitty, which leads to her discontent with her cake and runaway from home. They just happen, and happen only once, and maybe because of that, they set an important milestone in their lives. Mrs. Dalloway will never forget the kiss. Laura may not realize what the kiss means to her, but it actually leads to her decision to abandon the family, the kids, and affect Clarissa, and maybe more.

In the book, Laura stays at Clarissa’s place for a night, and Clarissa is happy that the monster that Richard describes in his book is just an ordinary old woman. Laura does not say too much, but puts a soft closure to the whole story. While in the movie, Laura asks Clarissa what it means to regret when there is no option but you think you are going to die. Same concepts in the book and in the movie, but are displayed in different ways.

Overall, love this book. Although I was thinking of finishing this book, and then remove it from my bookshelf for good, I can’t. I love the story, the wording, and it stays.