A Rollercoaster Ride of The Hours

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into by watching this movie. Already the first scene of the movie shocked me, depicting Virginia Woolf’s suicide. I was wrong to believe that this would be the last tragic suicide to happen in this film, with Richard committing suicide later on as well.

I really enjoyed the parallels that the film made to the book. It was great that we saw Virginia Woolf’s story played out in this movie as her own story. Contrary to the novel Mrs. Dalloway, where we only learn about her in connection to the inspiration behind Clarissa and Septimus’ stories. We talked in class about how Virginia Woolf struggled with mental illness herself, but I had no idea that she actually committed suicide and I had no idea that she did so by drowning herself. This was very interesting because it helped me see the book she writes from her own perspective.

We talked in class about if Clarissa was really meant to be portrayed as unhappy and depressive in the book, but after watching this movie I think it is very clear that that is exactly what Virginia Woolf was attempting to do. The character Clarissa was a combination of all movie characters: Laura, Clarissa, and Virginia. She was unhappy with her marriage, but worried about not being married, just like Laura. She was worried about Richard, as she did care about him in a way and she was in love with Sally. She also very much loved her daughter Elizabeth (Julia in the movie) and cared about her well-being, just like the character Clarissa did in the movie. She also experienced troubles with mental illness and suffered in her environment, just like Virginia Woolf did.

I loved how the stories of the three different characters connected in the end with Richard’s suicide. When I saw him going to the window, I already knew he was going to jump because of the parallels between him and Septimus in the book. It also paralleled with the book, as there was some suspense of whether or not Richard/Septimus was actually going to kill himself.


It took me a surprisingly long time to figure out that Richie from the 1950s was also AIDS-stricken Richard in 2001. I watched the end of this movie with a friend, and she realized it immediately but it took me until the very end when Laura visits Clarissa, to figure out that it was the same man. I think that was the point in the movie when I was most surprised, as I hadn’t realized it until then and it turned the entire story and plot around. All in all, even though the movie was very heavy and hard to watch, it was a very well made movie that had some great connections to the book.

Comments

  1. Ayah JaberSeptember 16, 2017 at 6:54 PM

    Nicely written. I still don't know if Woolf wanted Dalloway to be depressed or not. I thought that in the movie, Mrs.Dalloway was facing one challenge in her life and then at the end of the movie she sort of reached closure by talking with Richards mother. But I could also understand if you thought she was depressed. I'm still torn.

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