Cozzi fan Tutti - The Hours - reviewed by Jill Cozzi and Gabriel Shanks

The resident critics of Cozzi Fan Tutti conducted what to our surprise turns out to be only our second Critics over Coffee. This après-screening discussion of THE HOURS was recorded only a few ten minutes after seeing the film, at a jam-packed New York City diner, a few days before the merciful end of 2002.

G: So. The Hours.

J: I’m gonna go home after this and pop some screeners into the VCR to cheer myself up. First I'll watch Max. Then I’m gonna watch The Pianist. And if I still don't feel better, I may just watch Jude again, just to cheer myself up.

G: Here’s my tag line: Greek Tragedy played as a Lifetime Movie of the Week. It is a tad depressing.

G: But it’s beautifully told, beautifully shot, and beautifully acted by the three lead actresses.

J: Yes, it’s a beautifully mounted production. But it’s…

G: It’s a bit unrelenting in its depression.

J: It’s unrelenting, but at the same time it doesn’t engage you at all. I understand what the film’s ultimate message is – that you should enjoy life – but to get there you have to sit through two hours of this navel-gazing, keening and wailing, rending of garments. I can figure that out for myself merely by contemplating a Buster Bar at my local Dairy Queen, or sitting through THE TWO TOWERS, or any number of things.

J: If I didn’t know the screenplay was based on the book, I’d have said that it contained a plot contrivance of cosmic proportions. But I’m a sucker for plot contrivances and plot twists and I never saw it coming

G: Both Stephen Daldry [the director] and David Hare [the screenwriter] seemed to be working very hard to find cinematic ways to make the stories connect. Julianne Moore opens a door in 1951, and then immediately Stephen Dillane opens a door in 1923. Or everyone’s gonna go buy flowers like Mrs. Dalloway. It seems a bit of overkill.

J: The bit with the flowers was more than a little bit heavy-handed; it violated the cardinal "show, don't tell" rule of storytelling.

J: Julianne Moore’s storyline seemed surreal; it didn’t really have the same mood that the rest of the film had. It was interesting…especially in light of Moore’s other major role this year, in Far From Heaven, which had a similar frame and setup. Still, it took an awfully long time to get where it was going.

G : Julianne Moore’s story?

J : Yes. It was muddy. Was she a closeted lesbian? Was she Betty Friedan’s stereotype of a depressed 1950’s housewife? I guess the story that worked best for me was Meryl Streep’s. After all, if someone’s nicknaming you Mrs. Dalloway, that’s probably not a great thing.

G: (Laughs.) Well, all three characters find these things in the story of Mrs. Dalloway that resonate in their lives. But in the book, [author] Michael Cunningham exquisitely, delicately revealed those connections. But the screenplay hammered each point home; Hare never seemed content to use a feather where a sledgehammer would do. I think the story I liked best was Nicole Kidman’s, because Virginia Woolf was such a fascinating person. Madness living side-by-side with genius, inside one body.

J : Isn’t that usually the way it works? Doesn't genius always require a certain amount of madness?

G: But in her, there’s that serious self-destructive streak. And her writing is her salvation from that, from doing damage to herself. And by the way, isn’t Nicole Kidman the biggest success story of the last few years? She was marvelous.

J: Yes, yes.

G: I mean, here’s an actress who started out in Hollywood known primarily as Tom Cruise’s bimbo wife...Days of Thunder, for example.

J: But she hasn’t put out a bad piece of work in, what, three years? Ever since To Die For, when she really broke through, she's just been getting better and more self-assured with each film. And to have the courage to look that, well, plain is something that requires a great deal of confidence.

G: That was it. That was the start. After last year, with Moulin Rouge! and The Others, you realize that this is a woman who is becoming a major talent.

J: The Hours is worth seeing for one thing: these are probably the three most talented actresses working in Hollywood today. Meryl Streep may be the only actress over 50 who still gets interesting characters to play that are not “moms.” Michelle Pfeiffer was put out to Mom Pasture when she turned 40. And Meryl – whether she’s that good or has that good an agent or whatever – still gets great roles to play.

G: We should probably also say that it’s got the best cast of the year, would you agree?

J: Oh, without a doubt.

G: I don’t think they all do great work – I personally wasn’t thrilled by Ed Harris – but you’ve got Ed Harris, John C. Reilly, Toni Collette…

J: Ed Harris is always too mannered for my taste. It always seems to be such an effort for him. But John C. Reilly chooses his roles well, and they always fit him....Toni Collette? Who was she?

G: She was the neighbor who goes into the hospital.

J: No, really? Good Lord, I didn't even recognize her. What a great little performance.

G: Atkins, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Dillane. It’s got great people: Stephen Daldry is a gorgeous filmmaker. Philip Glass’ score is great –

J: And it wasn’t archetypal Philip Glass. It wasn't that hypnotic work he does for the "...qatsi" films, which are so recognizable as Philip Glass they've almost become like copies of Glass' work.

G: You know, earlier you mentioned Far From Heaven. And I don’t think there’s any way to watch Julianne Moore’s work in The Hours without thinking about the other 1950’s housewife she played this year. Did you end up comparing them? I think her work in Far From Heaven may be a little more nuanced, but that may also be because of the script she was working with.

J: The script. Oy. It’s more of that self-congratulatory, navel-gazing, I’m-triumphant-because-I-managed-to-survive-the-day nonsense. I mean, look outside your own universe a little bit, folks. Suck it up. Sheesh. It's like watching the Wisdom Channel. No one cares about your 35-year-long journey towards personal discovery. The mysteries of DNA took less time to discover. Introspection is fine.But this isn't introspection. It’s the Lovely And Amazing syndrome. It's “I got through the day without killing myself, aren’t I wonderful”?

G: No, I didn’t like Lovely and Amazing, either. Again, a film that has great acting…

G: I was so angry at that film. At the choices the characters made. But I’m actually going to turn it back on you…there’s a movie you loved which I recently saw that has similar stuff, Unfaithful.

J: Now, wait a minute. I did not love it. There was something bizarrely compelling about it, like watching a train wreck. But it was not a good movie. I don’t think [director] Adrian Lyne has ever made a good movie. And Diane Lane – she wasn’t self-congratulatory about anything. On the contrary, it was her ambivalence about what she was doing that made her performance work. That character was self-indulgent in her actions. The Lovely And Amazing characters were self-indulgent in the way they think.

G: Well, she didn’t have to be – she got to have sex with a hot young French guy and then her husband cleaned up her mess for her. She got away scot-free. I thought the whole movie was the most contrived, manipulative, forced…

J: It was. But then, that whole movie is preposterous. It doesn’t happen that way. But I went into all that in my review.

G: But that navel-gazing thing you were mentioning. Diane Lane does a lot of that, crying and being racked with guilt, you know.

J: But that’s different. It’s about a specific event and it's fighting a moral battle with oneself about something one is DOING. In The Hours, the Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore characters' navel-gazing is sort of Life In General. It’s where what I call Contemporary Suburban Feminism has gone completely awry: I’ve been going to yoga for three years straight and I can put my legs behind my head and I read Kierkegaard, so that validates my importance in the cosmos.

G: I have another question about The Hours. I mean, here we sit, two hardened, bitter, New York film critics…

J: (laughs) Speaking of people who think that highbrow cultural references validates our importance inthe cosmos...You mean, how is this going to play in Springfield, Missouri?

G: Exactly. There are so many movies right now, I think, where Middle America is a big question: Max, Chicago, Narc, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. These are pretty rarefied experiences. Sitting there today watching The Hours, I thought: this film is never gonna work outside the intelligentsia of major cities. What they used to call The Cultural Elite.

J: Heh. I don’t think the FilmSnobs [note: our good friends, Stephen Himes and James Owen, whose Web site is based in Missouri] are going to love this.

G: But you’re a big and powerful critic, Jill Cozzi. What are you gonna tell Middle America about this film? Should they go see it? Point blank.

J: I’m going to say it’s really indulgent.

G: But nevertheless, it’s telling the story it came to tell. It’s not indulgent the way, say, Freddy Got Fingered is indulgent.

J: Thats self-indulgence on Tom Green's part. This is different because it's the characters who are [self]-indulgent, not the production. But I don't see this resonating much among people who have REAL problems -- the out-of-work, the retirees who have lost all their money, people who don't know how they're going to play the rent. I don't see them having a whole lot of sympathy for a 1950's housewife or for Meryl Streep's character's free-floating dissatisfaction.

G: Is it just depressing to watch depressing people, without some kind of added insight into the experience?

J: I’m just not that interested in these characters. After a while, it just gets to be, Enough Already, people! You are Just Not That Important!

G: It’s hard to feel sorry for them except as classic bipolars. I mean, these are women of privilege. They have money, they have nice things, they all have people who love them…and they’re miserable? It may be unfair, but you just want to say, maybe some reinvestigation is called for.

J: If you want the audience to sympathize, you have an obligation to find something to give meaning to these moments. Everybody’s got tsuris, everybody’s got something. And what are you going to do? Are you going to look at your life in terms of what you lack – which is guaranteed to make you miserable – or are you going to look at your life in terms of what you have? I mean, in another movie -- One True Thing -- which is not a great film but has one of the best speeches on this issue; one taken right from Anna Quindlen's book, Meryl Streep is dying of cancer and after telling daughter Renee Zellwegger that she's well aware of her husband's infidelities, she explains why she stays: “It’s so much easier to be happy.”

G: I completely agree. So…In summation...

J: Great performances, best cast of the year, marvelous Philip Glass score. Beautifully mounted production: sets, lighting…impeccable