Cultural Opportunity One-The Hours

I ventured to the video store in an attempt to rent Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but alas, they were out of copies. I could only remember a few other movies from the list of options, so I grabbed The Hours. This movie was quite the female oriented film, but I was able to appreciate the delicate connections found within the transitional tissue connecting three depressed women's lives. Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf in 1923 as she begins to write the book "Mrs. Dalloway". Meryl Streep plays Clarrisa, a modern woman in 2001, nicknamed "Mrs. Dalloway" by her poet friend Richard who is dying of AIDs. Clarissa is a lesbian but wonders if she loves Richard, who is gay himself. This situation mirrors Virginia Woolf, who has to restrain her inner lesbian for her loving husband. Julianne Moore plays a third woman, 1950’s housewife Laura. She also has lesbian tendencies and a loving husband, in addition to a son and daughter on the way. It turns out that her son is Richard, the poet friend of Clarissa. Richard kills himself in poetic fashion right before receiving an award. The suicide brings together Laura and Clarissa, who are the living embodiment of Virginia and her character Mrs. Dalloway The three women must overcome different obstacles but their situations are identical. They have to decide whether it is better to cope with their unhappy situations in order to allow happiness for their loved ones, or to find a way out of their suffocating constraints. Laura abandons her family since she cannot love them in the way they deserve, Virginia kills herself to spare her husband grief, and Clarissa most likely lives for her daughter and partner as she lived for Richard. This movie was an intense modernist view of depression, incorporating homosexuality, lesbianism, feminism, parenting, marriage and love with the intricate balance necessary to portray the central theme. At what point is it better to live for oneself than to live for others?