For Hours they Dissolved

For Hours they Dissolved

            After reading the book Mrs. Dalloway, and watching The Hours, a movie that's largely based on the book... 

           I wondered why the director, Stephen Daldry, had chosen the title of the movie to be "The Hours".  Although the motif of time is incredibly prevalent through the book, there are a host of other aspects that seem more significant at first inspection.  Perhaps Daldry saw Mrs. Dalloway as a manifesto against the incessant marching of time itself.  Something in the way that Clarissa so often "pursed her lips when she looked in the glass"(Woolf 37)--in a fleeting, yet impressing, moment of introspection. Something in the the old lady's walk, through the rooms of a lifetime--that gifted Daldry his final vision.  But of all the evidence, this dialogue in the movie hit me the hardest.

            It might just be me, but when Richard said those lines, it was incredibly gut-wrenching.  His words stood for the bitter nature of his personal infliction, and they also hinted at the shattered pieces in all the characters--Clarissa's mortality, Woolf's mental isolation, among others. They conveyed that no matter how comforting the characters can be to one another, and no matter how much they promise to hold "parties" to fill the void--they are ultimately alone to face their suffering for eternity.

           If anything, the movie granted me new understanding of the leaden circles.  For as long as the clock strikes over cloudy London, the "leaden circles"(Woolf 4) weigh down on their victims, binding them to cruel reality.

~Chris