abby-lorts

Stephen Daldry's The Hours is a film that takes place in three very different times, to three different women that are all linked by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. The first era of the film takes place in Sussex, England in 1941, then shoots forward to Los Angeles in 1951, then moves even further into the future with New York in 2001. All of these times are historically very different, and the beautiful set design and color film used really accentuates the difference between the time periods. The colors used in each time allows the viewer to effortlessly identify the different dates of the sections of the film. The first section of the film, starts in 1941, and then shifts back to 1925, to show the writing of Mrs. Dalloway by Woolf, portrayed by Nicole Kidman. The colors in this part of the film are very true. Nothing looks changed or filtered. The greens are green and the browns are brown. The set design is gorgeous and takes us into the gorgeous home of the writer Virginia Woolf and her husband Thomas Woolf, along with their amazing back yard filled with trees and gardens. The 1951 section of the film, with Julianne Moore playing Laura Brown, a reader of Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, is very warm. This part takes place in Los Angeles, California in the 50's, so it is very fitting that everything is orange, yellow, and red. Lots of palm tree and stucco houses lines the streets, and Moore's costumes are filled with warm colors, while she comes off as a cold character. When we are brought up to almost present day, everything looks blue and cold. Nothing is as warm as it used to be, and everything is a steel, metal, blue. Our main character for this part of the film is Clarissa Vaughn played by Meryl Streep. Vaughn is a woman, given the nickname Mrs. Dalloway, who lives out the story, almost exactly, written by Virginia Woolf, several years before. We are shown Vaughn's story as we see Woolf brainstorming and writing the same story, at the same time.

During the beginning sequence of the film, everything is intercut between the three different time periods, with lots of cutting on action that is brought together between these women that lived so many years apart. With the colors used, along with the aid of the set design, there is no confusion in the film differentiating the different times with the different women, and how they are all brought together by one piece of literature.