Failure In The Movie 'The Hours'

The Hours is a difficult movie to watch and understand throughout. With the constantly changing scenes and three eras, seeing where one woman’s life begins and the other continues can be challenging. However, I would highly recommend the movie to others and enjoyed watching it once I understood the conclusion. In The Hours, the symbolism of flowers as signs of love toward others—a means of showing she cares, despite not being able to show it through emotional stability. The most difficult part of The Hours is watching almost all of the characters’ suffer due to their perception of “failure.” Whether she failed her goal in life or failed a person in her life, each woman feels that she did not accomplish what she could have. Throughout
Virginia attempts to write and feels her failure when she cannot do so. Richard does not believe he could have won his award without having AIDS—his writing is not meaningful, him having AIDS is what made him successful. Laura’s inability to bake a cake defines her failure as a mother and wife—while her life seems happy, she can never reach happiness and that is her greatest failure. With each of these three persons, there is inevitability to their feelings of failure, especially with the prominence of self-distortion in their mental capacities. While their significant others cannot. Virginia, Richard, and Laura wrestle with the idea of mortality and can accept their own deaths. Leonard does everything in his power, including sacrificing himself, to protect Virginia from herself. He desperately clings to her life and will do whatever he deems necessary to see her life continue, despite her own criticisms sometimes and two previous suicide attempts. He is unwilling to let her go. We see the same characteristics in Clarissa. Even with Richard’s miserable condition, she refuses to let him go. She even prompts him to continue living in “this condition,” meaning barely surviving. For Laura, her significant other is actually Rich in her times of crisis. He refuses to let her go when she drops him off so that she can go to the hotel. As he thrashes and screams in the babysitter’s arms for his mother, he has the feeling that she is not coming back and will not accept