Film Reviews:  The Hours Movie and  Death and Life

This is artistically portrayed through the women-kissing scenes.  After each scene, the three women choose life.

Virginia Woolf kisses her sister who has come to visit and who has brought her kids with her.  Also the sister is returning to London, and to Woolf, living in London is life, as opposed to living in Richmond which is death.  She is suffocating in the small town.

Woolf’s choice for life is further shown when she directly tells her husband that she is held against her will in Richmond and that she wants to move to London where she feels she can live life.

Julianne Moore’s character, after she kisses her female visitor, chooses life.  Yes, she goes to a hotel room with the thoughts of suicide because her current life of being a housewife is death to her.  She changes her mind and chooses life and this means abandoning her husband, her home, and even her son and daughter.

She reveals how she has chosen life by leaving her family and moving to Canada.  She knows opinions of what she has done is despicable, but in her mind, she chose life rather than the suffocating death that she was living.  The director does a great job of showing this with how the camera is used.  Also, the detail of the sad-looking birthday cake shows how Moore is not cut out to be the 1950s-type wife.  The three women stars in this movie do a great job of how they want to “live!”

With Meryl Streep’s character, she kisses her female partner at the end and this signifies that Streep, too, is going to choose life.  She makes this conscious decision after listening to the mother character who has come to attend her son’s funeral.  The mother showing up for her son's funeral is ironic.  She shows up to attend her son’s funeral when all the time, all those lost years, she could have had and shared with him.  

Streep’s life changes from the daily routines of life, where she has been using to hide herself from looking inward, to a stark look at her own self.  This is shown through the nervous breakdown scene.  This is further illustrated by Ed Harris’ character who commits suicide by falling out the window to release Streep of her daily routines that keep her from looking inward.

So the movie focuses on these women who choose life, even when the consequences--suicide, abandoning one’s family, search for true self—which are end results that don’t always end happily.  Meryl Streep's case is the most hopeful. 

The kissing scene is a great, artistic detail to show when, at what point, do they decide to choose life, in their own minds.

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