Dear Leonard. To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard, always the years between us, always the years. Always the love. Always the hours. – Virginia Woolf to her husband Leonard

The lives of quiet desperation tend to roar more deafeningly even when they cease. Loneliness lingers – in their art, in the lives they’ve affected and shattered, or in the ghosts of memories. The Hours is a film that offers no absolution. There is no joy whatsoever here. But there is beauty in the way everything was laid out, even in the lack of hope or just the mere illusion of it. You can expect nothing less from actresses of the caliber of Meryll Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman (who won the Oscar for portraying Virginia Woolf). Each was effective in her own role; each was affectingly pathetic. In the words of Virginia, each was “living a life I have no wish to live.”

One critic wrote that “Stephen Daldry’s The Hours suffers from misleading ideas about love, life, and death, some of which stem from its source novel by Michael Cunningham. But it remains the best-acted film of 2002, boasting one of the most spectacular casts I’ve ever seen in one movie. It seamlessly sews together three complicated and emotionally demanding storylines. And it works like the best poetry, giving us room to explore ideas and issues instead of narrowing itself to simple moral lessons.”

I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then. – Clarissa Vaugn

Happiness, they say, is fleeting. But it is what everyone wants. What everyone is ultimately demanding from life in whatever form it may come. And when it hides its face, some people make drastic choices, convinced they don’t have any. Some choose life. Some choose death. If one is leaning towards the latter, then stay away from this movie. It can be more than just disturbing. For even when one chose life, she didn’t find happiness.

It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bear. There it is. No one’s going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life. -Laura Brown