Movie information from Highway 290 Revisited
Review Board Names 'Mystic River' Top Film
The Board that kicked off last season by naming The Hours the top film started this season by honoring Mystic River . Check out the whole list of their top ten and marvel at this: no Return of the King ! I still think it's the odds-on Best Picture favorite...
This isn't the timeliest movie to review, in spite of its title. But it took a second watching of this film on DVD to fully appreciate how profound it is.
(And yes, that opening sentence contained the words "time," "second," and "watch" before I realized what an unfunny pun I was working with.)
Rare is the film in which you've heard of almost everyone in it. Like Gosford Park --similarly robbed with a single Oscar in 2001's competition--this film assembles the talent needed to bring a difficult script to life.
Weaving three stories together is a deft feat, accomplished here by connecting the stories with the ties that bind them. These include the party each of the three main characters plans to host on the day in which the film takes place, the same-sex kiss each shares before the day is out, and Mrs. Dalloway , the Virginia Woolf novel that one character is writing, one is reading, and one is living. Also instrumental in keeping the flow of the movie going is a superb score by minimalist Philip Glass.
It's the acting that really shines, though. Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep earn our empathy in every scene, radiating their feelings above and beyond the carefully crafted script. Kidman's scowling Woolf, battling husband Stephen Dillane for the right to control her own troubled existence, is as believable a tortured genius as can be imagined, outshining even Russell Crowe's portrayal of John Nash. Moore's '50s housewife hides the pain of her discontent from her husband--an excellent John C. Reilly--but not from us. Streep's face telegraphs her joy at buying the flowers for her party and her guilty dismay when Ed Harris scolds her for living to throw it.
Still, why should you watch a movie about three women in the throes of crisis? Because the film conveys at least two messages of profound importance. The first is that happiness is not to be taken for granted. As Streep lies on her bed, talking to daughter Claire Danes, she recalls the day, long ago, when she awoke at dawn from a night spent with Harris, before both embarked on lives with same-sex partners. She felt such possibility, such joy--the beginning, she thought, of happiness. But that was happiness, she now knows. She should have known it then. She should have understood it sooner. She's been trapped in that moment ever since, looking down a road never taken, rueing the brambles that have long since overgrown it. She should have been living the life she's got.
The second message is that things are getting better. The three stories carry across four generations. In the first, Virginia Woolf kisses her sister in desperation at her situation. Miranda Richardson's reaction is a fit of hysterics, and she flees to London. In the second, Moore's housewife kisses neighbor Toni Collette to comfort her about an impending medical procedure that threatens her womanhood. Collette partakes, then pretends it didn't happen. In the third, Streep kisses lover-of-ten-years Allison Janney passionately, seeming to acknowledge in a moment Janney's years of living in the shadows of a memory and renewing a relationship that seemed troubled as the film opened. Danes gives a hug filled with forgiveness whose significance, in my opinion, outweighs all three kisses, showing that the next iteration of the story can contain not only a modicum of happiness but also forgiveness for those who suffered through the stories of the past and couldn't quite cope.
The Hours begins and ends with a suicide, with another in the middle for good measure. Yet it affirms the value of life, of moving on, of progress, of the notion that tomorrow will be better. It is a movie of depth and ideas. If you haven't seen it yet, you're missing out on one of the decade's most profound cinematic achievements.
