MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM’S THE HOURS
The Hours-Trailer
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmFDGAPi
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THE HOURS-Laura and Kitty’s kiss
• Kitty nods against Laura’s breasts. The question has
been silently asked and silently answered, it seems.
They are both afflicted and blessed, full of shared
secrets, striving every moment. They are each
impersonating someone.
They are weary and
beleaguered; they have taken on such enormous work.
Kitty lifts her face, and their lips touch. They both
know what they are doing. They rest their mouths,
each on the other. They touch their lips together, but
do not quite kiss. It is Kitty who pulls away. “You are
sweet,” she says. Laura releases Kitty. She steps back.
She has gone too far, they’ve both gone too far, but it is
Kitty who’s pulled away first. (Cunningham, 110)
The Hours- Laura and Kitty’s kiss
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPF9nzzu
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The Hours- Virginia’s kiss
• Here is Nelly with the tea and ginger and here, forever,
is Virginia, unaccountably happy, better than happy,
alive, sitting with Vanessa in the kitchen on an ordinary
spring day as Nelly, the subjugated Amazon queen,
Nelly the ever indignant, displays what she’s been
compelled to bring. Nelly turns away and, although it is
not at all their custom, Virginia leans forward and
kisses Vanessa on the mouth. It is an innocent kiss,
innocent enough, but just now, in this kitchen, behind
Nelly’s back, it feels like the most delicious and
forbidden of pleasures. Vanessa returns the kiss.
(Cunningham, 154)
The Hours- Virginia’s kiss
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrllO4wkJ
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The Hours-Richard’s death
• The apartment is full of light. Clarissa almost
gasps at the threshold. All the shades have been
raised, the windows opened. Although the air is
filled only with the ordinary daylight that enters
any tenement apartment on a sunny afternoon, it
seems, in Richard's room, like a silent explosion.
Here are his cardboard boxes, his bathtub (filthier
than she'd realized), the dusty mirror and the
expensive coffeemaker, all revealed in their true
pathos, their ordinary smallness. It is, quite
simply, the tenement apartment of a deranged
person. (Cunningham, 195)
The Hours-Richard’s death
• He seems so certain, so serene, that she briefly
imagines it hasn't happened at all. She reaches
the window in time to see Richard still in flight,
his robe billowing, and it seems even now as if it
might be a minor accident, something reparable.
She sees him touch the ground five floors below,
sees him kneel on the concrete, sees his head
strike, hears the sound he makes, and yet she
believes, at least for another moment, leaning
out over the sill, that he will stand up again,
groggy perhaps, winded, but still himself, still
whole, still able to speak (Cunningham, 200).
The Hours-Richard’s death
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWZapP8
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The Hours-Richard’s death
• The candles are lit. The song is sung. Dan, blowing the
candles out, sprays a few tiny droplets of clear spittle
onto the icing's smooth surface. Laura applauds and,
after a moment, Richie does too.
• 'Happy birthday, darling', she says.
• A spasm of fury rises unexpectedly, catches in her
throat. He is coarse, gross, stupid; he has sprayed spit
on the cake. She herself is trapped here forever, posing
as a wife. She must get through this night, and then
tomorrow morning, and then another night here, in
these rooms, with nowhere else to go. She must
please; she must continue (T. H., 205)
The Hours-Richard’s death
• " It is possible to die. Laura thinks, suddenly,
of how she- how anyone- can make a choice
like that. [...] She could decide to die. (T.H.,
151)
The Hours-Richard’s death
• She strokes her belly. I would never. She says
the words out loud in the clean, silent room: ‘I
would never”. She loves life, loves it
hopelessly, at least at certain moments; and
she would be killing her son as well. She
would be killing her son and her husband and
the other child, still forming inside her. (T. H.,
151-152)
The Hours- To kill or not to kill the
heroine
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f0TNK7f
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