The movie the "Hours" was really intriguing and attention grabbing. This one had me guessing the entire time as to who fit where and how the stories related to one another. A couple of the themes seemed that kept reoccurring were suicide and homosexuality. The relation between the two intrigued me. It seemed that these two themes fed off one another. The ideas of hopelessness in life or the depreciation of life is what spurred Virginia Woolfe to be consumed by suicide both personally and in her novel. Along with this hopelessness it seemed that by grasping at any reason to live would have spurred her or her characters to continue on living. Therefore when both Virginia and Richard's mother kiss other women and fail to have the same passion reciprocated is when they both revert back to ideas of suicide.
As for her other characters Clarissa and Richard who actually are homosexual, it causes a tease almost because even they have not found complete happiness with their sexual orientation either. I think that this could cause for further exploration. Raising the question that if relationships heterosexual or homosexual, do not take away the feelings of hopelessness that can lead to suicide, then in what other ways is Virginia Woolfe trying to tell us is the root to having real appreciation for life? And is the only way to have appreciation for life is for someone to take their own life?
I don’t think The Hours is so much about suicide as it is about the redemptive power of love and work. Consider, for example, the case of Virginia Woolf herself. Though it rings true that she committed suicide, but she created a body of work Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own, and other writings—that still resonates today. And in her personal life, there was her 29-year committed relationship with her husband Leonard. I think it’s significant that when the movie shows Virginia preparing to drown herself, we hear Nicole Kidman’s voice-over of a note Virginia left for her husband: “Dear Leonard, to look life in the face, always to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is. At last, to know it, to love it for what it is, and then … to put it away. Leonard … always the years between us, always the years … always … the love … always … the hours.”
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