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EAST PORTLAND • 32nd & E Burnside St. • 231-8926
I M U SIC
M IL L E N N IU M
NW PORTLAND • 23rd & NW Johnson • 248-0163
Friday, Jan u a ry 3 1st 8 p m
ARLENE SCHNITZER HALL
Tickets: FASTIXX Outlets, by phone 224-8499
or at the PCPA Box office
NORDSTROM
In the company of Woolf
Michael Cimningham’s The Hours
is a (nearly) perfect film
by
L isa B radshaw
daptation is a
tricky business.
Michael C un
ningham’s 1998
Pulitzer-winning novel
The Hours, based on the
style and work of Vir
ginia Woolf, is not only
a popular, beloved piece
of fiction (particularly
with queer readers), it is,
like Woolfs Kxiks, a
story made up of emo
tional connectioas, of
abstract thought. It’s a
stream-of-consciousness
tour de force about three
women in three differ
ent time periods span
ning through the centu
ry like water rushing
over rocks.
Those rcxks belong
to Virginia Wtxdf. She
put a very large one into
a ptKket of her trench
coat to easure her
drowning (she had pre
viously been unsuccess
ful) in 1941 England.
She had written more
than 20 Kxiks, innumer
able essays and was one
of the most celebrated
authors and intellectuals
in the world. But she
was mad— having severe
Knits of mania and hear
ing voices— and another
war had begun.
So The Hours begins
(Kxrk and movie): with
Virginias plunge and
lifeless, peaceful float
over the rocks at the
Kittom of the Ouse
River.
Cunninghams Kxik
is so beautifully written
and original, it’s the kind
of artistic experience that
makes your heart heat
faster. Drawing on
Top: Meryl Streep and Ed Harris are perfect foils in The Htmrs.
Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dai-
Middle: Jack Rovello and Juiianne Moore are a mother and son in
liHvay, aKmt a day in the
crisis. Bottom: Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf and Stephen Dillane
life of an upper-class soci-
as patient husband Leonard.
ety woman in post-WWI
London, Cunningham reinvents his Clarissa Dal-
feels like a failure, but she loves to read and
loway in late 1990s New York. And he makes her
escapes by plunging into Kxiks. She has just
a lesbian— long-term relationship and all.
begun a wonderful one called Mrs. Dalloway.
This mtxlem-day Clarissa is throwing a
Bounce into the ’90s and find Clarissa argu
party, just like W oolf’s Clarissa, hut for very dif
ing with Richard aKmt whether they gave him
ferent reasons. She is celebrating her former
the poetry prize because he is deserving or
lover Richard’s poetry prize. Richard is gay, and
because he is dying.
he’s dying of AIDS.
Birnncc hack to the 1920s. Virginia visits with
Bounce hack to the 1920s. Virginia Wcxilf is her sister, Vanessa Bell, and her uproarious chil
writing Mrs. DalLnvay. She’s getting over a
dren. She kisses her sister to taste the sights, sounds
Knit of illness while living in the suburbs with
and smells she used to know. She misses London.
her husband, Leonard. She has everything she
Bounce to the 1950s. Laura has shared a
needs, but she exhibits a lonely, frightened
kiss with a neighKir woman. She’s thinking of
quality. She eats nearly nothing.
killing herself.
Bounce into the 1950s. Laura Brown is an
You get the picture. How do you adapt that?
unhappily married woman with a child she
As it turns out, rather well.
seems to not know what to do with. And she’s
Fans of Cunningham , the gay author who
pregnant with another. She is indifferent to her
also wrote Flesh and Blood, could have been
spouse and is a rather hopeless housewife. She
utterly disappointed. (Remember Beloved?