The Hours

Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep

Directed…

The Hours

Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep

Directed by Stephen Daldry

The novel from which “The Hours” is adapted, Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize winner of the same name, doesn’t exactly scream to be made into a film. It is essentially concerned with the overwhelming sadness of three women living in three different time periods who are connected for most of the book by little more than subtle cues in Cunningham’s language.

So why does it succeed on screen? Three reasons: Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. We’re talking three of our finest actresses, all in top form. They’re able to bring as much depth to their characters as Cunningham did on the page. With the support of other fine actors such as Ed Harris and John C. Reilly – whose omnipresence in this year’s important cinema is becoming almost comical – they make the film a colossus of modern acting. If it were to completely cast aside the idea of narrative and exist as a collection of random vignettes, I think I’d still be content to just sit and marvel at these great actresses playing these great characters.

Kidman plays Virginia Woolf, whose suicide opens – and yes, sets the tone for – the film. After that, we’re taken back in time – to the early 1920s – and reintroduced to her in the midst of her struggle with depression and what would become her most celebrated book, “Mrs. Dalloway.” Moore is Laura Brown, a troubled wife and mother at the end of World War II, who is breaking down as the book she’s reading – yep, “Mrs. Dalloway” – stirs her feelings of discontentment. Streep plays Clarissa Vaughan, a lesbian in modern day New York City, whose day of preparation for a party she’s throwing bears similarities to the day we see Woolf writing for Mrs. Dalloway. In addition, Clarissa’s beloved friend Richard (Ed Harris), a poet dying of AIDS, has nicknamed her Mrs. Dalloway. She, too, is unhappy.

I guess it’s all a pretty big bummer. There is beauty in it, though. And the sadness, it’s somehow warm, you can wrap yourself in it. The nontraditional score by Philip Glass probably has something to do with that.

So what is it with these theater directors? Sam Mendes has already given us two great films – “American Beauty” and “Road to Perdition” – since he made the jump to film directing. Rob Marshall has shown remarkable filmmaking ability with “Chicago.” And now, on his sophomore effort – his first film was 2000’s delightful “Billy Elliot” – Stephen Daldry, veteran of the British stage, has directed the best-acted film of the year. Hollywood needs to hit Broadway and recruit more of these guys.