'The Hours' - what's it all about? (spoiler warning)

Cafe Society
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I saw The Hours the other day. I enjoyed the movie and thought it was very well acted, but I’m not sure I fully understand what it’s all about.

  1. Is coping with clinical depression a major theme? Is this why all of the characters seem so troubled?

  2. Why do all/most of the main characters appear to have latent homosexual tendencies?

  3. Ego-dystonic homosexuality?

  4. I can understand why living during intolerant times would cause Julianne Moore’s and Nicole Kidman’s characters considerable angst, but why Meryl Streep’s? She wasn’t living a lie; she was openly lesbian.

  5. Why would Julianne Moore’s character abandon her husband and children? …unless this is in keeping with #1 above. Even so, if she were clinically depressed I doubt that would give her solace. Ironically, she seemed somewhat content (for lack of a better word) with her decision.

So, what’s really going on here?

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  1. Well, I’m not sure it’s a major theme so much as it is a reality of life. To me, the movie was more about taking charge of one’s life to escape whatever fate depression may bring. Each woman makes a conscious choice to leave depression behind, with radically different results.

  2. Well, Virginia Woolf was bisexual and Clarissa was in a long term lesbian relatioship. I don’t thik Laura’s kiss meant more than that she desperately needed something to save hr, combined wih the desperation that Kitty was feeling over her impending illness.

  3. I’m not sure where you are going with this… are you saying Richard is gay because his mother left him, and he felt inadequate as a man afterwards? I don’t think so.

  4. Oh, but she was living a lie. She was living in a world where Richard usee to be hers, and he chose to live his life as a gay man. She was demoted to his sidekick, his Mrs. Dalloway.

  5. Why does anyone leave their husband and children? Maybe she thought it was the only way for her to survive; maybe she was just selfish. Maybe both.