Inky Shadows

Introduction: Inky Shadows

Movie Actors Scribbling Letters Very Fast in Crucial Scenes

The velocity with which they write –
Don’t you know it? It’s from the heart!
They are acting the whole part out.
Love! Has taken them up –
Like writing to god in the night.
Meet me! I’m dying! Come at once!
The crisis is on them, the shock
Drives from the nerve to the pen,
Pours from the blood into ink.

- By Jean Garrigue

Whenever we describe another person or recount a story involving people other than ourselves we commit a biographical act. Whether berating or celebrating the subject we portray, our interpretation of
One example of this alternation between the lucid, highly intelligent younger Murdoch and her older, mentally deteriorating self, occurs in a sequence during which Kate Winslet, in her portrayal of the younger Murdoch, is pictured riding a bicycle and discussing her first novel excitedly. This action is positioned next to a scene involving the writer’s older self as played by Judi Dench, straining to complete what would become her final novel, clasping her head in a gesture of distress and repeatedly crossing out words. As the biopic flickers between studies of the author at the beginning and end of her career, Eyre exposes colliding narratives of hope and despair and so synthesises that life is an amalgamation of both beauty and tragedy, a philosophy evident in much of Murdoch’s own prose. The film’s structure also acts to reveal turbulences in the relationship between Murdoch and Bayley. For instance, a scene depicting the moment the young couple make love for the first time is situated next to one detailing a crippling argument between the older couple, provoked by the stress caused in dealing with Murdoch’s disease. The swinging patterns which
The biopic approaches its hunt for Woolf with a structure formed of three distinct narratives that in places converge. Each story is representative of an element of Woolf – one depicting her physical self in a portrayal by Nicole Kidman, another dramatising her novel ‘Mrs Dalloway,’ the story of which is transposed on to a 1980s New York setting and the third telling the story of a young mother battling suicidal impulses, who is reading ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and who recognises herself in the plot’s themes of isolation and the desperation to please others in order to feel a sense of self worth. The film’s skeleton performs a waltz between these plots which symbolise the roles of the Writer, Story and Reader - exploring its subject not solely through the writer’s own interactions with others but also observing the characters she created and audiences she addressed. By encompassing different aspects of Woolf’s existence, The Hours acknowledges both her outer, public life in the narrative focussing on her relationship with Leonard Woolf as well as the inner life in which she produced her novels. In dramatising products of Woolf’s imagination, Daldry ignites themes of survival and continuation, showing how Woolf’s ideas and characters