Comparing a movie to a musical composition is one of those commonplaces of upper-middle film criticism that's almost never true. "The Hours" is the exception that proves the rule. Director Stephen Daldry (of "Billy Elliot") and screenwriter David Hare (an esteemed English playwright) have done what seemed impossible, rendering Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a meditative exercise in which not much happens, into a meticulously constructed and richly rewarding film that dissolves the boundaries of time and narrative. Cunningham's book and Daldry's film are musical in the sense that each is essentially an exercise in counterpoint, a theme and variations based on Woolf's novel "Mrs. Dalloway," which attempts to distill a woman's entire life into the events of a single day.
See Salon.com for full review.
