Dir. Todd Haynes, US/France, 2002, 107 mins
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson
Review by Jonathan Wilkins
Todd Haynes’ homage to the Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 1950s (which arguably paved the way for the soap operas of today) takes us to a highly idealised America, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
Far From Heaven tells the story of a seemingly happy family living an idyllic existence in suburban America. Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid), a successful business man, has a dark secret and this coupled with his wife Cathy’s (Julianne Moore) increasing attraction to a black gardener (Dennis Haysbert) causes tensions both within the family and the tight knit community.
Julianne Moore (who has collaborated with Haynes previously on Safe) skilfully creates a totally believable character from what should be a flat and one-dimensional representation of a forlorn housewife. As the film progresses her character gradually begins to realise that things are falling apart and every inch of this angst registers in Moore’s performance. It is hard to imagine another actress achieving as much as Moore does in this film.
The real revelation however is Dennis Quaid, who delivers an emotionally charged turn as a man trying, and failing, to fit into the twee world around him. Despite overtly dramatic musical stings from Elmer Bernstein’s grandiose score punctuating every plot point, the film significantly avoids becoming too explicitly camp. Due to relaxation in censorship, Haynes pushes past restrictions that were originally imposed on the genre. It is testament to his attention to detail that the sudden use of an expletive is so shocking and surprising. Although the acting style used in the early stages of the film might seem stilted and wooden, Haynes uses this to evoke the sense of a veneer, beneath which lie real people with problems that are buried beneath social constraints.It is ideas like this that make Far From Heaven’s reinvention of the melodrama a success.
Todd Haynes multi-layered tale examines the social themes of racism, homosexuality, and the role of women in families, issues that were enticingly swept under the carpet during the heyday of fifties middle America. It was mostly by chance that the intellectual German émigré, Douglas Sirk, almost single-handedly invented the genre.
Haynes says: “In Hollywood, in the 1950s at Universal Studios, he was hired to make these screen versions of Ladies Home Journal sort of stories. The films he made (Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows) have become well-known, cherished, and later studied in the ‘auteur’ traditions. They are mostly known for their vivid use of Technicolor, but their beautiful lighting also boldly infuses ‘film noir’ darks and shadows. The films were stories of women in domestic settings that were also about the repressive nature of American bourgeois culture.
Haynes feels that “the strongest melodramas are those without apparent villains, where characters end up hurting each other unwittingly, just by pursuing their desires.”
With Far from Heaven, he says “We tried to approximate a whole look, a whole style, and a whole cinematic language that aren’t familiar today.the style and the content are inseparable.the style reflects the emotional experience of the story.”
