Blog From The Bench

A friend of mine died last week. No, not a friend, not exactly. More of a presence, a presence in my life that I didn't really take much note of while it was there. But now that it's not there, I realize how important it really was.

I learned of his death four days ago, and since then, I've wanted to watch THE HOURS. I can think of no other film that deals with that thin, fragile line separating life and death in a more beautiful or graceful or heartbreaking way. By telling three variations of the basic story found in Virginia Woolf's magnificent novel "Mrs. Dalloway" (one of my very favorite pieces of literature) writer Michael Cunningham, like Woolf before him, is able to explore the pulses of daily life and find the subtle moments in everyday life that express the meaning of what it is to live, and sometimes, the meaning of what it is to die.

In THE HOURS director Stephan Daldry seamlessly interweaves these three stories, finding the similarities that connect these three individual stories that occur over the course of eighty years. Through some beautiful editing, particularly in the opening minutes of the film, Daldry collapses the time barrier and giving the impression that these stories are occurring simultaneously despite the supposed decades that separate them. I've always liked that idea- that time is cyclical, and that human experience is some kind of shared experience and common bond that links humanity despite the barriers of language, location, and even time.

I noticed during this viewing that flowers are a motif that runs through the entire film. Opening (like Woolf's novel) with the acquirement of bouquets of flowers, flowers are ever-present in this movie, as both decorative items for a part and as subtle symbols of life and renewal. Flowers have meant more to me the last few days than they have in the past. Yesterday morning, in my British Writers class, my professor brought in a bunch of yellow roses and set them on the seat in front of me. If he had been there, it was the seat he would have sat in, just as he had every other Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning since early January. My professor cried through most of class, reading some poetry and sharing a few thoughts. We wrote a few things down on blank cards if we wanted to. I had a hard time keeping my eyes off of those yellow roses. Those flowers, supposed symbols of regrowth and the ever-renewing cycle of nature, was standing in for a life that was no longer existed. It was a bizarre juxtaposition that crushed me.

Suicide, death or the threat of death are also themes that run throughout the entire film, touching all of the characters in each individual plotline. Death is certainly something that is inevitable and unavoidable any time life in involved, and THE HOURS is one of the best films I can think of that carefully examines the fragile balance of life and death, and how it affects the thoughts and perception of those who must carry and live after it occurs. As Woolf (played by Nicole Kidman, in an Oscar winning performance) ruminates as she gives life to perhaps her most brilliant novel (well... it's hard to say that, both "To the Lighthouse" and "Orlando" are just as good), there's very little that separates these two entities. She sates simply, in a moment of ephiphany, that somebody must die. Somebody must die, so that the others might live. "Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more."

Life has a funny way of working things out sometimes. In my previously mentioned British Writers class we will be starting "Mrs. Dalloway" in two weeks time. I don't know if he had ever read it, but I know he won't be reading it with us. I've been looking forward to the opportunity to reread the book all semester, but it's going to have a rather different meaning this time around. A deeper, more profound one. Suicide won't just be an abstract concept in a book anymore.

It'll be... real. And painful. And maybe, hopefully, it'll illuminate. Because those of us left behind must figure out some way to make sense of things and carry on.