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By the Book

The Hours

1h 54m

Directed by Stephen Daldry • 2002 • United States
Starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep

The powerhouse trio of Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman deliver masterful performances in Stephen Daldry’s exquisitely multilayered adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Set across a span of eight decades, THE HOURS tells the stories of three women in different times, related by subtle parallels in their personal lives. Present-day New Yorker Clarissa (Streep) throws a party for a writer friend suffering from AIDS. Laura (Moore), living in 1949 Los Angeles, quietly suffers under the constraints of being a wife and mother. Virginia Woolf (an Oscar-winning Kidman), writes one of her greatest works, MRS. DALLOWAY, while grappling with depression. Each faces a profound internal crisis that brings her to the existential edge.

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