Movie Review: ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ Directed By Marleen Gorris - “To Love Makes One Solitary”

Image Credit: Roger Ebert

“I prefer men to cauliflowers”

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Introduction

All spiritual practice is meant to awaken from the dream of the separate self according to Stephen Mitchell. All of us are linked regardless of how isolated we might look from others.

There is a pivotal moment in most people's lives. We consider making our choices and keep up with them to the present minute. However, the other person is still inside us, who stands at the head of the not chosen route eternally. "Mrs. Dalloway" is a day's communion between the existing lady and the lady that might instead have existed.

Initial Movie release - 4 September 1997 (Germany)

Book Originally published - 14 May 1925

Adapted from - Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Director - Marleen Gorris

Screenplay - Eileen Atkins

Produced by Stephen Bayly

Cast - Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, Natascha McElhone as Young Clarissa, Michael Kitchen aa Peter Walsh, Rupert Graves – Septimus Warren Smith, Lena Headey as Sally Seton

Characters - Septimus Warren Smith, Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway, Richard Dalloway, Hugh Whitbread, Rezia Warren Smith

The Opening Shot

Image Credit: The Times

“Mrs. Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence”

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

13 June 1923: A middle-aged Londoner walks away to purchase flowers for the event she's hosting on this night. When the last guests leave, the lady's life will have been unveiled, contained in a collection of superimposed observations and mementos. 

Mrs. Dalloway, the 1925 masterwork of modern literature by Virginia Woolf was, I felt, inexplicable or call it unfilmable- yet how could one, with her time fragmentation and a plethora of interior monologues, preserve Woolf's storytelling form to a linear medium of visual images?

Yet, Director Marleen Gorris and screenwriter Eileen Atkins, in Mrs. Dalloway (First Look Pictures), did an excellent job to imply the inner mental spin Woolf strives to portray and produce an exterior story of lustrous beauty.

A Walk Through The Movie: Non-Spoiler Alert!

Mrs. Dalloway is an excellent adaptation of Virginia Woolf's classic novel, elegantly designed and brilliantly played on the big screen. As Clarissa Dalloway, a tender, sometimes distracted, somewhat wistful, spiritually cool upper-class lady, Vanessa Redgrave exhibits her performance tour de force. 

One day in June 1923, while she was ready for the party she was hosting, her mind drowned in the past. Clarissa wonders and perhaps regrets that she has chosen a safe marriage with a boring politician rather than giving herself to a zealous admirer. When this aged beau of her shows unforeseen at her door, he triggers the same intensity she felt years before.

Image Credit: Eye For Film

“What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with this extraordinary excitement?

It is Clarissa, he said.

For there she was.”

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

When the movie goes through Clarissa's day, long-ago summers will be flashed back when young Peter (Alex Cox) courted young Clarissa (Natascha McElhone) and young Sally (Lena Headey) perhaps also courted her, although the movie is much more sensitive and cagier than the novel about that. But Woolf is too prudent to leave the sunny past of memories to Peter and Sally. Both of them turn up on this day.

Unity of The English Society

Now, Clarissa's party unites all of English society's elements. She relishes the moment, but is disturbed when a doctor speaks about one of his patient’s suicide-  a World War I shell-shocked warrior. When she hears about this death, Clarissa runs into her room only to discover her soulful relationship to the solitude, loneliness, and despair of this young person. 

Woolf suggests that the First World War has released horrors that contaminate all levels of society. She later comes back to the party.

There is a fantastic moment in which Peter and Sally find a quiet spot at the party and he tells her about Clarissa, "I have loved her once and it sticks by me for the whole of my life and lightened every day with colors.” Sally nods, holding to herself her own thoughts. 

Image Credit: Pinterest

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame, and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Sally may be doing the same type of two-track thought process that Clarissa uses in middle age: both ladies see far more acutely and critically than anyone can anticipate.

This highly sensitive film is similar in creativity and sensibility to a film by director Marleen Gorris, the Dutch film 'Antonia's Line', winner of the Academy Award, exploring the universal theme of women's experiences.

The other side is here. Surprisingly, Gorris, who was quite open about Antonia's sexuality, was so cautious about the unwritten lesbianism of Woolf's novel but it's there for those who can observe it.

Movie Motif

Image Credit: Reel Club

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”

 

-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

The actor and screenwriter Eileen Atkins' screenplay vividly depicts the underlying theme of Woolfe's novel-we are all connected regardless of the psychological and social differences.

Suicide is the core part of the plot. Woolf questions the meaning of Clarissa and Septimus' choosing to live a life they saw through. The omnipresence of sharp fence wires, such as life, on which one could be thrashed, is a subtle motif throughout the film.

The Bottom Line

So if you’re a classic lover, don’t miss out on the chance of exploring the modern world and consciousness by certain violence in the war, by brief gendered nudity, and by a few profanities.

My ratings for the movie - 3.5 on 5

Written By - Prakriti Chaudhary