Far From Heaven (film)
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Todd Haynes |
|---|---|
| Distributor | Universal Studios |
| This uniquely beautiful film—from one of the smartest and most idiosyncratic of contemporary directors, Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine)—takes the lush 1950s visual style of so-called women’s pictures (particularly those of Douglas Sirk, director of Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession) to tell a story that mixes both sexual and racial prejudice. Julianne Moore, an amazing fusion of vulnerability and will power, plays a housewife whose husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret gay life. When she finds solace in the company of a… | |
Reviews
Amazon.com
This uniquely beautiful film—from one of the smartest and most idiosyncratic of contemporary directors, Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine)—takes the lush 1950s visual style of so-called women’s pictures (particularly those of Douglas Sirk, director of Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession) to tell a story that mixes both sexual and racial prejudice. Julianne Moore, an amazing fusion of vulnerability and will power, plays a housewife whose husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret gay life. When she finds solace in the company of a black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), rumors and peer pressure destroy any chance she has at happiness. It’s astonishing how a movie with such a stylized veneer can be so emotionally compelling; the cast and filmmakers have such an impeccable command of the look and feel of the genre that every moment is simultaneously artificial and deeply felt. Far from Heaven is ingenious and completely engrossing. —Bret Fetzer
Barnes and Noble
The most ambitious project yet from indie director Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine), Far from Heaven is a meticulous homage to the ‘50s melodramas of Douglas Sirk—right down to the swelling Elmer Bernstein score and the obsessive attention to costume and décor. Borrowing elements both from Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life, it tells the story of an upper-middle-class Connecticut housewife (Julianne Moore) whose picture-perfect world collapses when she discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) is gay. Simultaneously, she finds herself ostracized by her conservative suburban community for befriending a black gardener (Dennis Haysbert). Moore is terrific as she movingly portrays a woman desperately trying to live up to the ‘50s ideal of devoted wife, yet failing due to circumstances out of her control. Encased in padded, corseted period garb and surrounded by the sterile elegance of her midcentury-modern dream house, she seems embalmed in her own life. Cineastes will swoon over Haynes’s absolutely flawless re-creation of the Sirkian world—it’s so flawless, in fact, that the film occasionally feels a bit airless and academic (unlike Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s own brilliant, scathing Sirk homage, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul). But Moore’s performance, and to a lesser extent Quaid’s, keep the film alive. Far from Heaven offers the same pleasures that the original melodramas do, by inviting the audience to indulge in big, sweeping emotions in the context of a gorgeously executed movie. By approaching the so-called “Woman’s Weepy” with respect and complete lack of irony, Haynes succeeds in resuscitating a maligned but worthy genre. Kryssa Schemmerling
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Related works
Far From Heaven: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
With typical verve, director Todd Haynes’s film not only seeks to evoke Douglas Sirk’s social-themed Hollywood melodramas of the ‘50s, but to bring an entirely new one to life with a distinct lack of modern irony. In telling the story of a Connecticut couple whose “perfect” relationship masks taboo undercurrents of homosexuality and interracial love, Haynes has found the perfect musical collaborator in 50-plus-year film scoring veteran Elmer Bernstein. The composer manages a deft tightrope act here, managing to inform Haynes’s film-out-of-time with the same…
