THE HOURS

In 1923 Virginia Woolf writes a philosophical masterpiece of her life ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ while going through a psychological turmoil of understanding the whole purpose and end of her life. 30 years down the line, another woman named Laura Brown married to a World War II veteran, raising a small boy, reads the same while being pregnant and finds herself in the same mental conflict. 50 years from then another woman Clarissa Vaughn, a present day version of Mrs. Dalloway so named by her one time lover and now AIDS stricken writer Richard living in New York, plans one of her renowned parties for him after he receives a prestigious poetry award.

There is a common link that joins the lives of these three modern, educated women who are going through the most difficult times of their lives. Virginia Woolf is a renowned writer, married to a caring husband and also psychologically compromised according to the physicians. May be her sexual preferences are different or may be it is just the emotional outburst which gets manifested when she kisses her sister. But one thing is sure that she is not satisfied. Her failure to convey or change the things through her writings may be the reason she decides to find a better refuge by ending her very life. Rather a better way of conveying the message she always wanted to. On the other hand the second woman having a lovely family too craves for the missing link that would complete Mrs. Dalloway’s life. She not only decides to commit suicide but also prepares hard by leaving her son crying for his mother. But she finds herself too weak for that and decides to leave her family and start the things afresh. It is a suicide in a way too though not physical but internal. The third woman nursing her terminally ill lover, living with her lesbian partner dies every second whenever she craves for the things that she can’t have or can’t change. Though, in the third story it is the male who commits suicide by jumping from the window of his sick, gloomy apartment.

The movie is a masterpiece in itself. It is too hard to understand the spiritual quest of the three women in the movie. But the message is clear. We don’t need a reason to die though we need a reason to live. The movie is a justification that one has the right to end his or her own life whatever may be the reason or whatever may be not. It is too difficult to accept that death may not be the end of one’s life but the state which is beyond the realm of understanding of mortal beings. It would be called escapism or cowardness by the people who form a society but the same society also creates the situation which forces someone to end his or her life. Whatever it is, it really was an enlightening experience watching the life unfolds and taking a new way of living – death.