-film review on The Hours Julie Rigg - 23/2/03 not helpful it doesn’t mention any specific helpful features of director, just praises actresses

-film review on The Hours - stella papamichael 10/2/03 not helpful mentions one theme/link to Billy Elliot + is very shortun

Sunday, 4 January 2009  Reviewed by Jonathan Romney

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/the-reader-stephen-daldry-123-mins-15-1223876.html

Discusses the juxtaposition of both sex and the holocaust in the film, mixing the issue of sexuality Daldry uses often in his films and his main source of interest of the subject matter and context. Can produce an uncomfortable reaction from the audience. but as suggested before in (find link) the audience start to feel sympathy for a character who has committed such crimes in the war. The Hanna who leaves the courtroom is different to the Hanna the audience sees in the first act, which is more of a love story.

The source suggests that what happens to Michael is more of a ‘political and philosophical’ matter than an ‘emotional awakening’.

‘The Reader hooks you with sex in order to get you thinking about ethics’

The film also crosses German/English - English actors playing German characters and German actors speaking English - perhaps regarding the films ‘linguistic confusion’.

The Reader also uses a large amount of English Literature. Michael reads Hanna English books Huckleberry Finn and Tintin, and later on Hanna’s prison library is ‘stocked entirely with English books’.

The sound in The Reader is reminiscent to that of The Hours, as the score ‘emotionally’ supports what’s happening onscreen - American composer Nico Muhly (who worked for many years with Phillip Glass - composer of sound in The Hours).

‘I think we were incredibly lucky to have had him, and I love it because like Philip, he brings another level of conversation to the film rather than just emotionally supporting what’s happening. It’s another dialectic that goes on, sometimes in counterpoint to what you’re watching.’

Ref to theatre - uses methods he uses in theatre - in response to a question on the mood on set: ‘it was an unusual and familial and collegiate atmosphere..that’s how you work in theatre’

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=50985

Dec. 8th 2008 Source: Edward Douglas

‘He reads her The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo and seems to be vaguely considering the possibility of filming it.’

“It’s about a porcelain bunny, which, I imagine, would make it unfilmable. It’s about what happens to this toy on a journey through the American Depression, which is interesting.’

He talks about everybody investing their hopes and dreams into a porcelain bunny and was interested in this idea. A further link to stylistic feature  of using literature.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5358884.ece

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2003/feb/12/oscars2003.oscars

Interview with Daldry by the Guardian’s Theatre Critic Michael Billington

On the script of The Hours: It felt unique and “out-of-genre”. Every other script reminded me of another film - this one didn’t and I thought it was incredibly powerful’.

In response to the Q “So that initial stage was about finding the right structure and trying to interweave the strands of the story?”

‘It was very much about rhythm, context, cutting patterns and where you need to release certain information to make the tension work. What I like about the film is that people have a very personal response to it, but for us making it, it felt like a thriller as you release those connections between the three stories’.

Daldry mentions the ‘odd’ suicide of friend Sarah Kane, playwright at The Royal Court Theatre. There is an implication that this may have drawn him to the film/links to the film, he says ‘It doesn’t seem to me to be about death, although there is that sense of suicide’.

‘People used to say, “Books change your life”. Well, books change my life, but it’s not a phrase you hear very often any more’ - the films i’m researching are all based on novels.

‘The books that I read felt very powerful - not only in my adolescence but now. I still read books that inform me or change me or upset me..’

‘I categorically resist this idea that films are supposed to be autobiographical and the only stories you tell are about your own life. This is not my own life. Yes, there might be moments when I get fed up and think of suicide, but it’s not my own life…I made Billy Elliot, people asked me, “Oh, did you want to be a dancer when you were young, then?” I didn’t even like dance before I made the film. “Do you come from the north-east?” No, Somerset. “Is it based on someone?” No. We made it up. We just made it up. The act of making something up seems to be very difficult these days. This is something that Virginia Woolf, Michael Cunningham, David Hare and I just made up’ - explanations on how he comes about creating the film - it’s not about him or his experiences at all.

‘The book deals with internal monologues, what could be termed “voiceover”, which David very rightly rejected early on. It’s about actions, really. When we come down to it, Michael, it’s about actions. Which is basically late Stanislavsky rather than early Stanislavsky’ - influences from theatre, very close relationships with writers, he says ‘you do whatever they say. One is Caryl Churchill, and the other is David Hare’.

Q: Sound was important too, Strauss’s Four Last Songs appears in the film. Was that in the book?

‘That was Meryl. She decided that. So we thought it was a great idea’ - influences from all aspects of the film: writer, actor, editor, etc.

Apparently Daldry is currently filming Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, starring Sandra Bullock/Tom Hanks/John Goodman, a story about ‘a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist, (who) searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks’ -Imdb.

After further research I discovered that this film was also adapted from a novel of the same name (by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2005), which makes four major motion pictures of Daldry’s being film adaptions. I think that perhaps he likes the form of literature and the emotional transitions made by characters, etc.  

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=extremely+loud+and+incredibly+close

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Loud_and_Incredibly_Close

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/39/hours.php

A review by Gabrielle Wenig

‘But while it is a moving, emotional and passionate film, it is grounded in a perverse moral order’

‘The subversive message in The Hours is: Life is only worthwhile if it is fiercely exhilarating and intoxicating, and death is to be preferred over an existence that in any way fails to match this measure. In the world of the film, blessed ordinariness — love, affection, security, and routine — is death, while madness, that is, meanness or an exclusive and sadistic regard for one’s own interests, is life.’

‘…all the characters in the film feel so strongly about the agony of ordinary existence, and find their lives so asphyxiating, that escape, in whatever form it takes, becomes their oxygen…The film presents these escapes, which include suicide (Virginia, Richard), abandoning children (Laura), and martyrdom (Clarissa), as primal acts coming from a place that leaves the characters with no other alternative.’ - escape being a theme explored in Daldry’s work (Billy Elliot - dancing, The Reader - reading).

‘in the world of the film, conventional marriage to a man increases a woman’s sense of isolation and loneliness, and emotional bonding is only achieved through communing with other women — hence the Sapphic undertones of the movie and the tender lesbian kisses that all three women have. The film purports, dubiously, that these lesbian eruptions offer the women a far deeper connection than their husbands can, since marriage in The Hours is a prison’- sexuality - theme explored by Daldry in all three films - e.g. in Billy Elliot there us the subtext of Billy’s friend’s struggles with his sexuality, in The Reader there is the main issue of the fact Hanna is an older woman having a sort of affair with a much younger boy. 

Audience response - ‘We lose our moral bearing as we concentrate on the self-absorption of these women —and in the solipsistic world of The Hours, that is all that matters’.

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=5466

A film review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat - A Good source which praises the film but doesn’t mention any downfalls the film might have or any specific traits of director.

‘The multi-layered structure of the story is laid out beautifully in the opening seven-minute sequence that unfolds without dialogue and is carried into our emotions with the enchanting piano and strings music of Philip Glass’ - use of orchestral recordings to carry narrative, ‘multi-layered structure’ - perhaps similar to different time zones in The Reader.

‘a skillful sense of pace and a high regard for the acting talents of the actresses who carry this film into our hearts with so many inimitable scenes of tenderness, loss, discontent, and yearning…explores the many spiritual connections that link our lives to others, living and dead’ - actors justifying our belief, audience empathy - emotional.

‘The drama also will speak to all those who at one time or another have felt closed off or alienated from the lives they’ve chosen or been forced to bear due to circumstances beyond their control’ - perhaps a link to Dalrdy’s own fears (see first ideas).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2000/oct/03/artsfeatures.awardsandprizes:

When speaking of his interests in the script of Billy Elliot he said he liked ‘the idea that it was a full-on emotional journey’, which in a way is a similar theme to The Hours and The Reader, the protagonist (or in terms of The Hours the group of connected women) experience emotional journeys throughout the films.

http://www.indiewire.com/article/interview_stephen_daldry_dances_to_success_with_billy_elliot/

A quote on THEMES OF Billy Elliot: ‘I liked the emotional honesty of “Billy Elliot.” Also Lee writes brilliant kids. And there’s a series of themes in it I rather enjoyed: Grief; finding means of self-identification through some sort of creative act, in this case dance; and the miner’s strike itself.’

Internet:

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/39/hours.php

http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=5466

Internet:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2000/oct/03/artsfeatures.awardsandprizes

http://www.indiewire.com/article/interview_stephen_daldry_dances_to_success_with_billy_elliot/

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article6142808.ece