Ms Dalloway and the Hours

The movie “The Hours” is extremely thought provoking and tells an adapted story about Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway in a very interesting way. It is not a movie that copies the novel Mrs. Dalloway, but takes it’s themes and pushes the boundaries further to create new ideas that are more updated with its time. The storyline is a bit twisted from that of Mrs. Dalloway with Clarissa’s life being too coincidental with the characters’ names from Mrs. Dalloway, making lots of references to the actual novel itself. Both subjects occur over the span of a day, with the characters thoughts and observations being expressed out loud. The themes that can be seen in both the novel and the play are death and the interplay of time.
From the start of the opening scene of the film, there is instantly shown significance of death. The act of suicide when Virginia walking towards the river while the film cuts back in time to the moment when she is writing her final letter to her last lover Leonard. “The Hours" deals with three women’s lives illuminating what happens to each of them during the course of one day, with each individual story cutting right onto the other. All their lives correspond as thoughts of suicide invade each aspect of their lives. Woolf’s novel took place one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an English nurse, who is planning a party all the while pondering upon thoughts of suicide. However in the movie, Woolf weaves in and out of the day of another character in a different place, Richard, a poet who actually commits suicide. In a particular scene of the movie, Leonard Woolf questions Virginia upcoming novel [yes, she is writing Mrs. Dalloway], to which she replies, “Someone has to die in order for the rest of us to value life more.” This striking quote establishes the relationship between life and death which is present in both subjects. The poet must die because he/she sees more clearly while everyone else is living an illuminated and intense life. For