I came to this film from a lecture on the Western Canon. I am still in the middle of reading "Mrs. Dalloway Reader." I thought I would take a break and watch the movie.
Adapted from the novel by Virginia Woolf, it is a screenplay by Eileen Atkins. A lot of the dialogue is directly from the book. Of course, some things have to be different just to turn the story into a movie instead of a lecture.
The story is more complete and in-depth than I can reveal in a short review. However, it is London, summer 1923. We take part in a day in Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway's life when she (Vanessa Redgrave) is about to have a party and meet old friends. Here, through a series of flashbacks, she contemplates the choices she made in life.
On a side note, with all the different major actors in the movie, one has a tendency to think, "Now where have I seen him/her act before?" Luckily, everyone plays his/her part so well that you soon forget the actor and empathize with the character.
The only thing that really bothered me was watching Evans (Richard Bradshaw) being dispatched in Septimus Warren Smith's (Rupert Graves) mind. They called PTSD shell-shock. I understand that it was quite a necessary part of the movie. I never had PTSD, but being surrounded by it, this came too close to home.
Now look for the book “The Mrs. Dalloway Reader”
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