daylight

I re-watched The Hours last night, which I haven't seen since its release in 2002. It's a beautiful, powerful movie and I found myself hoping to try reading Mrs. Dalloway, again. I checked reviews, as I usually do after watching movies, and most people found the movie slow and morbid, two stars at the most. Yes, the film deals with dark themes - suicide, death, abandonment, mental disease. But the movie left me feeling alive. Maybe it was Meryl Streep's performance - she has that effect on me. Really, it was the three beautifully interwoven stories, they are as much about life as they are about death.

I think anyone who calls the movie too depressing to watch is missing the point. Virginia Woolf spells it out for the audience, in a conversation with her husband Leonard, him questioning why someone must die in her novel. Her reply - Someone has to die in order for the rest us to value life.