"The Hours" in Book and Film

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses and analyzes the book, "The Hours", by Michael Cunningham, and the film, "The Hours", directed by Stephen Daldry. Specifically, it compares and contrasts the novel to the film adaptation and discusses whether the film succeeds in retaining the integrity of Cunningham's novel. "The Hours" is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel adapted to the screen by writer David Hare.

From the Paper:

"Michael Cunningham's book follows a day in the lives of three women, while chronicling the last days of writer Virginia Woolf. One of the characters' stories, Clarissa Vaughn's, closely parallels the story of Clarissa Dalloway in Woolf's novel, "Mrs. Dalloway," and throughout the book, Woolf is writing "Mrs. Dalloway" while the other characters live their lives, always somehow in relation to "Mrs. Dalloway." The book is difficult to read in spots, and the language is often stilted and reminiscent of the early 20th century, and relies a bit too heavily on quotes from the original "Mrs. Dalloway." However, even if the book follows the lives of each woman in jumpy scenes, they are still quite specifically notated, which adds to the understanding of the novel, but the film jumps from scene to scene between the women, sometimes leaving the viewer disjointed and confused, especially if they have not read the novel."

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