Today marks the anniversary of the 1925 publication of Mrs. Dalloway. The stream-of-consciousness novel has long been considered a modernist classic, perhaps the most accomplished work in Woolf's oeuvre—and though its elliptical prose and complex themes render Mrs. Dalloway a particular challenge for adaptation, this has naturally not stopped people from attempting to do so, with varying degrees of success.
The above is either the worst or the best such adaptation, depending upon how highly you value things like coherence, tone, and style. It has none of Marleen Gorris’s respectful fidelity, none of Philip Glass’s aggressive atmosphere. Indeed, Natalia Povalyaeva’s animated short, Mrs. Dalloway and the Flowers, has almost nothing to do with the novel at all. Unless, that is, we are talking about the line, “It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.”
Sadie Stein is contributing editor of The Pari
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