The Hours is a masterpiece of depression and introspection. If you're preoccupied with counting the hours, it's either because time is moving too fast, or too slow. The film seems to do both. Its laborious pace seems to make each action take forever, yet the film was suddenly over long before I was ready to leave.

The film concerns three women and their connection to the novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The first woman is the novel's author, Virginia Woolf. The film begins with her suicide, so even those who don't know of her fate before the film's opening, soon do. For the most part, we see Woolf engaged in the act of writing the novel in 1923 in Richmond, England. Virginia Woolf is played by Nicole Kidman with a fake nose. She's really good, the nose is pretty distracting.

The second woman is Laura Brown, a post World War II housewife in Los Angeles, who is reading book while pregnant with her second child. She is so desperately unhappy with her life that she plans to end her life, too. Julianne Moore plays the tortured Laura Brown so listlessly you ache to make her happy.

The third woman is Clarissa Vaughan. Her connection to the novel is that she is so like Mrs. Dalloway. She's a wonderful entertainer and in the throws of planning a party as the film opens. Meryl Streep plays Clarissa, but never seems to be anything other than Meryl Streep.

There is a spectacular array of supporting characters, all of them well known. The West Wings' Alison Janney, Clare Danes, Toni Collete, Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Miranda Richardson, even Eileen Atkins, who played Virginia Woolf in the 1990 TV version of Room of One's Own.

But the most striking role is that of the music by Phillip Glass, which adds life and linkage to the film is a most wonderful way. The first ten minutes as we struggle to understand who these characters are is made into an exhilarating experience through Glass's score.

The movie, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham is harsh on women. The three central women are somewhat demonized in this film as needy creatures, unable or unwilling to give of themselves. . Whether much of that comes from Woolf or Cunningham, I never really gleaned.

The Hours is a stunning film. It is woven together so beautifully that you find yourself hanging by the tiny threads of plot that link the three stories. You wait with heart-wrenching anticipation as Virginia weighs up who will die in her novel, knowing that somehow the fate of the other two stories lie in this decision. Virginia's husband, Leonard, asks why must anyone has to die? She explains that "Someone has to die so the rest of us can value life more." She's so right. Throughout the film I found myself longing to see the sun shining and hear birds singing.


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