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December 15, 2007
"The Hours" as a Poam
In looking at how multiple meanings can be derived from poems (and poams) and how these meanings can be experienced in different visual and sonic forms, I am reminded of the movie, “The Hours.” Based off of Michael Cunningham’s novel, this film presents the lives of three different women who wake up to a morning in June. What stands before them is a day that ultimately defines their whole lives. In 1923, Virginia Woolf begins to write her novel Mrs. Dalloway. In the 1950s, Laura Brown prepares a party for her husband’s birthday, and in present day Clarissa Vaughan must prepare a party for her close friend Richard. Each expands three generations of women creating multiple realities, which in a sense, all function within a single poam.
As I viewed Jason J. Gillingham’s poetry I was also reminded of this movie. As Professor Moss pointed out, words are never defined in one way here. Instead, their definitions change with the environment they are placed in. In “The Hours,” themes of insecurity, choosing between life and death, and what it means to be the perfect hostess change, relative to the situations of each woman.
The film becomes fragmented into three separate truths: that of the writer, the audience, and the woman living the novel out. In viewing these multiple realities, we see how they function in a single day in three different time periods. In the beginning of the movie, we see Virginia writing “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” the first line of her novel. This line is then read aloud by Laura who is reading the novel. And finally we see the importance of this line travel into present day as Clarissa claims that she will buy flowers, and we see her actually doing so. The film has no set formula as themes and instances move and circulate from the past to the present, and vice versa.
There is no ultimate meaning. What we are instead left with is a comparison on three separate stories and how certain feelings, such as a lack of individuality transcend time through the lives of three entirely different women. Such themes move fluidly through the movie in an attempt to demonstrate how they can and will adapt to different environments and times.
Posted by pbali at December 15, 2007 07:35 PM