The Hours is not a film which I think is “aging well,” which is a phrase that I hope I never use again. The best critique I’ve found of this movie, of course, comes from Jonathan Rosenbaum, who faults The Hours for its inch-deep consideration of the feminist literary tradition. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” gets a lot of play, but precious little else comes through other than hyping up the line. Naturally I have never seen anyone else talk about this idea.

Nicole Kidman’s Oscar victory was marred, perhaps even before it happened, with people making fun of the fake nose she wore to be Virginia Woolf. How innocent we were in 2002, when a fake nose was the caricature of too-serious acting as opposed to whatever it is that Hollywood itself seems to think good acting is since 2010. (Look under “Academy Awards” for more information.) There’s some consternation as to why any of these well-off women should be struggling so much with their feelings; have they tried checking their privilege? Stephen Daldry has been on a severe downswing, speaking of the word “down” this is definitely a downer…

That’s why I keep returning to The Hours, a decent movie based on a fairly meh little novel. Misery porn is cheap in the dual sense that it is both vapid as well as easy to produce. And what the privilege police are referring back to is actually pretty important. Only one of the women in The Hours is socially secure; the other two are both endangered by their surroundings in serious ways. Yet for all three, the social issues presenting them as women (as queer women, as women entrusted with some level of concern for children) are superseded by personal despair. There are plenty of movies about personal despair and even more novels, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a work of fiction nail down what it feels like, deep inside oneself, to despair.

The feeling is based in the fear, and then the certainty, that the sadness will never go away. Abraham Lincoln said it more succinctly than Michael Cunningham, who said it more succinctly than David Hare. In April 1863, after visiting the Army of the Potomac (which, unlucky for Lincoln, would be absolutely routed at Chancellorsville about a month later), he said that he was glad to get out of D.C., “but nothing touches the tired spot.” That’s depression, verging on that feeling of despair. There is a sadness, a bleakness that nothing can entirely take away. It’s the same idea as what Richard expresses here. Nothing touches the tired spot; you still have to face the hours.