Stephen Daldry
The Hours

1920s: Virginia Woolf, tormented by her own struggles and an increasingly aggressive illness, writes the novel Mrs Dalloway.

1950s: Laura Brown, an avid reader of Mrs Dalloway, trapped in her tranquil life as a perfect housewife, decides it's time to make a difficult decision. 

2001: Clarissa Vaughan, a successful publisher, nicknamed Mrs Dalloway by her friends, organizes a party for a poet friend dying of AIDS, on the occasion of him winning a prestigious award.

Three women. Three eras. One day.

24 hours to reckon with their own existence, their dreams, their expectations, but above all with their regrets, their secrets, and their choices, resulting from a more or less pronounced inability to express their feelings.

It's precisely the everyday hours of different existences that converge and blend into a single story of rarefied charm, the true protagonists of this splendid film from 2002, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham.

It is time, or rather its lack of passing, the waiting it causes, and the immobility of the context in which the protagonists move, that are the reasons their lives will reach crucial turning points on that long path humans call life. Regardless of who, when, and where.

And it is precisely this development on three temporally distant planes that is the strength of this creation, along with an absolutely exceptional all-star cast.

If we examine the narrative style, we realize that the underlying psychological examination is homogeneous and continuous regardless of the fundamental temporal discontinuity, not disconnecting themes and concepts but linking them naturally. Thus, Woolf's torments find their most extreme manifestation in those of Laura or a veiled desire to coexist with them in Clarissa, giving rise to two visions of the same problem, much like a human mind encounters a crossroads when faced with a dilemma. All are united in the search for the meaning of an existence they feel is denied to them in its fullness. In this regard, the dialogues that describe their states of mind are profound, brilliant, and filled with a melancholy and a suffering of existence experienced in different forms (the language differences inherent to the historical context) but conveying a common message.

No one, in any place or time, can ever escape the responsibility of their choices.

Even the camera is finely enslaved by this mechanism and often connects the protagonists' actions as if they are all participating in the same drama on the same stage. One buys the flowers, another arranges them immediately after, and so on... In a triumph of elegance. 

The outstanding talent of the cast, as previously mentioned, is also one of the reasons to watch this film. Nicole Kidman is heartrending in the role of the English writer, mortifying her own splendid image with a horrible false nose and allowing her ambiguous and enigmatic glances to speak. Julianne Moore superbly unveils the discomfort and inadequacy of a dissatisfied woman. Meryl Streep, torn between love for her partner and the man she cares for, adds depth and intensity to a woman who mistakenly believes she can control every emotion at will. Finally, an honorable mention goes to the talented Ed Harris, the sole male in this female-driven film, embodying a sad figure, terribly afflicted by loneliness. Binding it all together are the extraordinary music by Philip Glass, capable of highlighting the protagonists' emotions, bridging different eras, and connecting the emotions.