Three Lifetimes, in two Hours

In contrast to my previous post about Virginia Woolf's essay, I think that the Hours is an extremely effective, and powerful message, not just for the place of women in society, but the place of lesbians in a society that is not accepting to them, and the place of artists and visionaries, and in a world that seems to care little for finding a deeper meaning to existence. At first one begins to question what it is that these women have in common that they all should be placed in such a strong comparison. The movie assists in this nicely, however, the complexity of the commentary is astounding, and though I have seen this movie three times already it would take many more for me to fully understand it. One of the most impressive displays of this is in the use of device to connect characters throughout the modern (1950, 2001) stories to the archetypes that Virginia Woolf is faced with. For example, by connecting the cracking of the eggs of Clarissa (the 2003 woman) with the cracking of the eggs of the servants, Clarissa is more often than not compared to the mundacity and business of the everyday life of Richmond surrounding Virginia. This is also quite obvious from how Richard treats Clarissa in their relationship. However, Clarissa often times also plays the part of Virginia, as seen from her conversation with Richard's ex, she seems to be "stuck" in a spiritual sense, and life has never seemed the same to her since her days with Richard. Also when Richard makes her feel as though her life is "trivial" he represents the archetype of Virginia's husband and the male dominated literary world. I am particularly fascinated and impressed with the integration of 1950's conformity into the story as it is a very powerful display of socially conditioned oppression perfectly appropriate for the tale. In my opinion the character of Laura Brown serves to live out the actuality of the Mrs. Dalloway character created by Virginia, and since this story merges with the modern story of Clarissa and Richard I think that this then creates a dichotomy: the author, and her characters as manifested in reality, and the resonating effect of such characters into modernity. It is a beautiful story that I have loved since I saw it the first time, although I will admit it does become a bit melodramatic at times. In short it is hard to say what unifies these characters but I think if I were to pick it would fall somewhere in the gray areas between the following quotes:
"Im living a life I have no wish to live..." (Virginia Woolf)
"It (meaning her previous life) was death....I chose life." (Laura Brown)
"To look life in the face, and know it for what it is, love it, and then put it away..."(Virginia Woolf)
It is amazing but the movie almost seems to leave me with a sense of having experienced what is described in this last quote.

A beautiful film to the very last moment.