Review: Far from Heaven (2002)
Jonathan F. Richards
FAR FROM HEAVEN
Years ago there was a movie called "Star" about the career of the actress
Gertrude Lawrence, with Julie Andrews playing the legendary diva. My father,
who had seen them both, thought that Julie had it all over Gertie. I mention
this because, while it comes down to a matter of taste, it is certainly possible
for the copy to outshine the original.
Todd Haynes, whose previous feature was the lush glitter-rock tribute
"Velvet Goldmine", has created a pastiche of the Douglas Sirk melodramas of the
1950s that tugged at the heartstrings, stiffened the upper lip, and were
probably responsible for the invention of the Kleenex Pocket Pack. Sirk,
wearing the straightjacket of '50s morality and the Hayes Production Office
Code, filmed such classics of the genre as "Magnificent Obsession", "Imitation
of Life" (the Lana Turner remake), and, most pointedly for our purposes here,
the 1955 "All that Heaven Allows", in which suburban housewife Jane Wyman falls
for her hunky gardener, Rock Hudson, and sets tongue wagging all over town.
That's the one Haynes has picked up on, but he's retouched it with themes
that could only be hinted at back in the Eisenhower era. In Haynes's version,
the housewife's gardener is black, and her husband is gay. Nobody was gay in
American movies until the '60s, when Don Murray battled his unspeakable demons
in "Advise and Consent". And television viewers of that era remember when Harry
Belafonte put his hand on Petula Clark's shoulder and the sponsors all pulled
their advertising.
The first thing that's apparent is that Haynes has utterly mastered the
form to which he's paying tribute. His movie opens with rich sensory foreplay
as the camera glides gently down through gaudy autumn leaves to a suburban
Hartford neighborhood where freshly-washed station wagons ply quiet streets and
children ride their bicycles, cocooned in the reassuring embrace of a soaring,
sobbing Elmer Bernstein score - the same Elmer Bernstein who was winning Oscars
for his movie music back in those distant days.
His heroine is Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore), the socialite mother of two
(a boy and a girl, natch) and wife of prominent businessman Frank Whitaker
(Dennis Quaid). Cathy is Pat Nixon as played by June Cleaver, and the
remarkable Moore gives her to us straight, an ice sculpture with a heart of pure
gold who wants and expects nothing more nor less than that her world should
continue to give her what it has always promised. But almost from the beginning
little scraps of apple peelings begin to litter the landscape of her Eden. Her
husband is detained by the cops (a misunderstanding); her scarf blows away (a
gust of wind); her little boy uses improper language ("aw, jeez...."); a strange
black man shows up in her yard (the deceased gardener's son). But these are
mere harbingers of the sordid shocks to come.
It is Cathy's discovery of her husband's sexual deviance that rocks her
world to its foundations. But those foundations are strong. She's willing to
stand by her man while he seeks counseling to cure the condition, but from our
perspective we know what the psychiatrist (James Rebhorn) hints at, that it may
be neither curable nor a disease. More shocking to our emancipated
sensibilities is the movie's other seismic theme. Cathy's 1957 Hartford suburb
is one that breathes a racism as clearly delineated as the two-toned pastel
colors on her Bel-Air wagon. When she sees her new gardener, Raymond Deagan
(Dennis Haysbert of TV's "24") at an art gallery with his little girl, Cathy
scandalizes the burghers by going over and talking with him. As befits the
form, Raymond is an intellectual in gardener's clothing who instructs her on
Joan Miró, and as the troubles in her life mount their friendship ripens. They
both seem a little thick about the effect their innocent companionship will have
on the community in which they have always lived, but that's how movie plots
work, and this is proudly and self-assuredly a movie.
It's a marvelous movie, from its sumptuous design (Mark Friedberg, "The Ice
Storm") to its perfect crinolined dresses (Sandy Powell) and its balletic camera
movements by Edward Lachman. The performances are wonderful, though Quaid seems
less at home in the period than the others. Haysbert brings a gentle dignity
and stature to his role, and Patricia Clarkson is splendid in the role of
Cathy's catty best friend. But it is Moore's performance that the picture
breathes through, and she is marvelous.
"Far from Heaven" shows us people trapped in a world from which there seems
to be no escape. From a half-century's perspective, we now know something they
couldn't know then -- that there was a way out of the Fifties. It was the
Sixties. That didn't turn out to be a very perfect fix, and it left plenty of
problems in place, including plenty of its own devising. Haynes gives us a look
at all of this, and reminds us where we've been, and where we need to go.
FAR FROM HEAVEN
Written and Directed by Todd Haynes
PG-13 107 minutes
DeVargas
Four Chiles
Todd Haynes, whose previous feature was the lush glitter-rock tribute "Velvet
Goldmine", has created a pastiche of the Douglas Sirk melodramas of the 1950s
("Magnificent Obsession", "All that Heaven Allows") that tugged at the
heartstrings, stiffened the upper lip, and were probably responsible for the
invention of the Kleenex Pocket Pack. And he's improved upon the master. With
a superb performance by Julianne Moore at the core of this period piece, and
terrific help from actors like Dennis Haysbert (TV's "24"), Dennis Quaid, and
Patricia Clarkson, and a great production staff, Haynes plays powerfully on
themes of homosexuality and racism that could barely be hinted at a half century
ago.
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Karina Montgomery
Full Price Feature
Far From Heaven is a delightfully complex movie made in the style of
the simplistic, idealistic technicolor 1950's film. It is not a film
about the '50's, though it is set in 1957, and some of the tension
and isolation in this story could only have happened in that time.
It is an authentic 50's movie, lifted through time, which could never
have been made in the era after which it is styled. The content that
writer/director Todd Haynes' script addresses would never have seen
the light of celluloid. His thesis appears to be this: if this film
had been made back then, in the year it is set, what would it have
been like? So he meticulously styled his script, from titles to
dialogue to music (Elmer Bernstein, also of Cat Women of the Moon,
The Ten Commandments, and The Great Escape, and everything
in-between) to props to habits to everything, and dropped in his
Ingredient X of the Future.
No, I'm not talking about sci fi aliens and whatnot - I am talking
about real problems that surely existed in that era but were never
addressed by Hollywood. Real problems we address on network TV every
night, in our "enlightened" era of today. His actors are like
puppets in a petri dish. My companion (from whom I get many of my
best analyses) compared Haynes to J.W. Waterhouse, the Victorian
artist who painted in the Renaissance style, classical figures doing
things never depicted in the classical period, be it deeply kissing
or drinking coffee, or exhibiting depth. Haynes painstakingly
reproduces the style, the feel of these films now 45 years in the
can, with amazing depth.
Enough cannot be said about the visual detail - yellowish
technicolor, flat lighting, "magazine" homes, scrubbed and golem-like
children, put on the shelf when not needed, projected street scenes
seen from inside a randomly rocking car. Even finer are the more
visceral details. Cigarettes have no filters, those dresses really
weren't flattering at all (just the mockups later at the natural
waist evoking but not reproducing the style), the alabaster gleam of
the simplest bakelite accessory (replaced by plastic later). At
night, streets and people are lit with the garish comic book colors
of Dick Tracy. The characters don't rush to the phone in order to
get to it before the answering machine goes off, and the caller lets
it ring, knowing it takes time to get through that split level ranch
home to the kitchen extension. Cocktails are imbibed, sex is
discussed, and it all feels so polished. Even the dialogue has that
McCarthyism gleam to it - flat and formal and somehow devoid. It's
not the actual 1950's, after all, it is Hollywood's two-dimensional
1950's. Bernstein got his start in this era, and his score swoops
and swells and traipses through the moods of the story.
It's not just a production design hat trick, either, though it could
feel like that in the mild and pleasant prologue. He does not pull a
Pleasantville, where you drop modern people into a past (and fake)
world, thereby "improving" that past with our "modern" attitudes.
Instead, he lets the world remain as it was, with no sea change of
modernity. The whole feel and tone informs the reactions of the film
- it is harder and harder for modern audiences to properly suspend
their disbelief and remember more innocent times, when Boris Karloff
as Frankenstein actually did scare the pants off of the audience. We
can know it intellectually, and watch smugly as a film character
screams and hides while the comically iconic monster trudges along,
but we have trouble feeling what that character would have felt like.
Haynes' unique palette informs our own reactions; we are more
immersed in this shiny glowing past by feeling it so richly. By
relying on a character (Julianne Moore as Kathy Whittaker) who
believes in that world so fully, that the resulting shock of the
events as they unfurl is more keenly felt by us.
Moore carries the brunt of the film, both in selling us this vivid
aqua reality but also in dealing with the effects wrought by the
actions of the two supporting men, her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid)
and her gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haybert), who is (whispering)
black. In true '50's style the wife takes the heat of public scorn
(or shields others from it) for what these men offer to the story,
and the level of destruction and havoc in her life could only have
happened in this unique point in history. To tell you more is to
ruin it. The turmoil is made the more interesting by the
aforementioned palpable empathy he creates with his tone. Kathy is
utterly unprepared for such events in her life, and we feel most
keenly how alone and how hopeless she must feel, isolated in 1957
with these burdens.
It's a beaufiful, thoughtful film, one that has to be seen and felt
to truly appreciate.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward
but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
rev...@cinerina.com
Check out previous reviews at:
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Dennis Schwartz
Lachman; editor: James Lyons; music: Elmer Bernstein; cast: Julianne Moore
(Cathy Whitaker), Dennis Quaid (Frank Whitaker), Dennis Haysbert (Raymond
Deagan), Patricia Clarkson (Eleanor Fine), Michael Gaston (Stanley Fine), Viola
Davis (Sybil), James Rebhorn (Dr. Bowman), Jordan Puryear (Sarah Deagan),
Lindsay Andretta (Janice Whitaker), Ryan Ward (David Whitaker), Celia Weston
(Mona Lauder); Runtime: 107; MPAA Rating: PG-13; producer: Christine Vachon; USA
Films/Focus Features; 2002)
"The film can be regaled alone just for its magnificently rich color tones."
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven" is, perhaps, a few steps away from being a
perfect film, but it does a more than fair job in updating and embellishing the
fluidity found in Douglas Sirk's brilliant 1950s melodrama from the 1950s "All
That Heaven Allows." What it does especially well is tell its pastiche story
visually through its superb camerawork highlighting the richly different colors
to complement the mood of the unfolding dramatics. The colors act as a litmus
test for mood as things change from golden hues to icy blues and there are dark
interior shots when conflicts develop that the main characters have repressed
and can't handle, and thereby all the wealth and external beauty that surround
the main characters no longer can make up for their inward disappointments. The
film after being initially drenched in a robust deluge of red maple leafs builds
in tension until its tearful conclusion in the spring where only a few white
dogwood flowerings signify any optimism in the air, as everything that was seen
initially as nature's fulfillment has been unrealized in the course of events
that take place in the changing seasons as the heroine's world comes crashing
down with a thud.
Sirk was known for making weepy women' pictures, and Haynes ("Safe"/"Poison"/
"Velvet Goldmine") follows suit and keeps the same focus on his central female
character. "Heaven" also ups the ante from Sirk's dramatization as Haynes
presents three ongoing critical situations for his heroine Julianne Moore, the
star actress in his "Safe," to juggle instead of the one in the Sirk film. In
Sirk' film, the young gardener and wealthy older widow have an affair that
caused the small town gossips to have a field day, as they laced into the couple
with their hatred for breaking a social tabu of mixing classes and the heroine
chooses their acceptance over love. Here the crisis explodes when the seemingly
ideal marriage is exposed as a sham because hubby discovers he's gay and her
status in the community is undercut when she crosses social boundaries and
befriends her husky young Negro gardener. Also, in the background, the subtle
racism in town parallels the civil rights movement in the south and the conflict
in Little Rock over integration as seen on TV. It is shown that racism is a
country-wide thing and not just confined to one part of the country. The film is
able to operate freely without the old Hollywood Production Codes of the 1950s
and thereby is brimming over with a charge of sexuality and an undertone of
repression and a restraint that befits those cautious Eisenhower years. The film
takes note that there is a signaling of an impending change to come over the
land first in civil rights and much later in gay rights, as it lays siege on the
so-called 'golden years' of Hollywood and debunks the myths of how everything
was so good back then. What the young director stubs his toes on, is that there
are too many heavy-handed and contrived scenes that become irksome when he makes
his points once too often instead of following Sirk's lead and letting the story
work itself out more naturally by trusting the viewer to see it all for
themselves rather than having everything spoon-fed for them.
"Heaven" opens to a wonderful cascade of autumn perfection of splendid yellows,
oranges and reds from the maple and oak trees in 1957 upper-class suburban
Hartford, Connecticut, as a crane tracking shot swoops across the rich landscape
and the viewer is magically transported into the idyllic New England setting and
onto the luxurious split-level ranch home of the Whitakers--the American Dream
personified--as the housewife drives up to her drive-way in her status
blue-and-white colored Buick station wagon where she deposits her precocious
little girl (Lindsay Andretta) after picking her up from her ballet lessons and
orders her bicycle riding son (Ryan Ward) to take in the groceries and to
refrain from saying shucks while she chats with her best friend Eleanor
(Patricia Clarkson) about their evening cocktail party. Eleanor just arrives in
her Buick coupe (a model which might signify she doesn't have children but has
money). The pretty redhead Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) is married to the
successful TV sales executive, Frank (Dennis Quaid). Also, on the scene for the
nuclear family is the perfect Negro maid Sybil (Viola Davis), someone a white
family can bank on for unswerving loyalty and someone manufactured from those
1950 sitcom TV shows but nevertheless a very real person. It's no coincidence
that she reminds one of the selfless maid Juanita Moore played in Sirk's
masterpiece "Imitation of Life," perhaps the best film of the 1950s to expose
the social racial dilemma in America. She's also the most genuine and the most
honestly dignified and realized one in the film. I learned more about what this
film was trying to say about race relations by observing her characterization
than I did from the role of the African American star who was supposed to
provide that look but ended up being a Sidney Poitier Hollywood caricature
instead of being the genuine article. In any case, the Whitakers are so
beautiful and smug that you might want to gag at this point; but, if you are
cynical that such middle-class bourgeois bliss could exist, all you have to do
is wait for the shoe to fall.
A society reporter conducts an interview and a photographer takes photos of
Cathy in her richly decorated house for a local story about the admired couple
everyone in town is proud of, as she's writing one of those "behind every great
man there's the perfect wife" stories. The snobbish elderly woman reporter
respectfully refers to them as Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech--the name of Frank's
downtown workplace. While the interview is going on, a large Negro man pops his
head around in the garden and Cathy doesn't know who he is and fights back her
fear to go out to confront him. It turns out that he's the son of her regular
gardener who died recently, but she doesn't know that because Negroes have been
invisible to her all her life and she doesn't even think they exist in town. But
she acts friendly with the gentle and articulate Raymond Deagan (Dennis
Haysbert), and the reporter mentions in her article of what a friend to the
Negroes Mrs. Whitaker is. She will later on be recruited to do volunteer work
for the NAACP, even though she is not political and remains naive about race
relations.
The major crisis begins when Cathy finds her husband in the arms of another man
and tries to get him to a shrink in time to mend his ways. Dr. Bowman (James
Rebhorn) says the chances are slim of getting Frank back to a 'normal'
heterosexual relationship, but if the patient is willing then it's worth a shot
to go through a heavy dose of analysis through his "aversion therapy." Frank's
immediate attitude is that it's despicable that he's queer and that he's going
to lick it. Cathy is the typical housewife of the 1950s dependent on the
financial support of her husband and will do anything to keep up appearances, as
she forgives him for his indiscretion hoping that the shrink could find a cure
and there would be nothing anymore to upset her seemingly perfect life. But her
despondent and alcohol driven hubby can't face himself anymore and in a moment
of despair and self-loathing, he accidently strikes and bruises her. She keeps
mum about that also, not even telling her best friend. The only one that Cathy
can speak to freely and who is intelligent enough to understand her overwhelming
domestic problems is the widower gardener, who is raising his sweet young
daughter Sarah (Puryear) with fatherly love and by hard work is trying to build
up a business in the community. The most interesting place he pops up to meet
her is in the local museum exhibiting all those Picassos and Mirós, art work
that an effete New York art dealer has organized for Eleanor and her society
ladies. Anything arty is associated with being fruity by the ladies and the most
striking barb is when the dealer's called by Eleanor a "wickedly successful
Gotham art dealer," which allows us to see in an amusing way how superficial
these elites are when judging others. Cathy is at first surprised to see Raymond
there and then draws the attention of her gasping catty lady friends when she
gravitates to her Negro, who is attending the art exhibition with his
11-year-old daughter. Negroes were not supposed to play in the white man's world
of culture back then in Hartford, according to the elite women's group. When
Raymond's with her, he can't resist the temptation to show off his knowledge of
modern art by lecturing to her on these current artists and how they have
scraped away the usual religious art symbols from their paintings and have now
boiled it all down to a matter of geometrical shapes and sharp colors. The Miró
painting viewed by them fits in with the film's theme, as it's titled: "The
Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown to a Pair of Lovers." This painting gives
them hope that they can find happiness together by just opening up and acting
civil with one another by communicating, and thereby have their racial
differences become a non-factor. They are the only ones in the film that make an
attempt to really communicate with each other. Raymond has passed the color test
and now that he's acceptable as an equal in her eyes, she seeks him out for a
seemingly chaste relationship even though she's bursting inside for a sexual
one. He will pop up out of her garden whenever it's convenient in the story for
them to get together, and this will result in many awkward meetings which rubbed
me the wrong way. It seemed like a contrived way to meet and the visual image
was mindful of a native coming out of the jungle. I would think Haynes could
have come up with a more graceful way for them to continue their affair, as the
only racial stereotyping that was missing from those scenes was a beating of
drums.
After one such awkward meeting a local gossip (Weston) sees Cathy go to a black
restaurant with the gardener and she spreads it around to her set of friends. As
a result she's ostracized for her interracial friendship and her children are
shunned by the other children, and she becomes a social pariah to all except for
Eleanor who doesn't believe her friend is like that and is still friendly until
in the last scene where she believes there is actually something going on
between them and also turns her back on her. When her husband confronts her
about her Negro, she drops her gardener as if he were a weed and tries to
rekindle her loveless marriage.
The seasons change, but Frank can't change who he is. An attempt is made to
regain their former happiness as he looks over her Christmas gift of travel
brochures and chooses a holiday in Miami over one in Cuba where Fidel is
fighting a revolutionary war with the Batista government. In Miami he meets the
man he falls in love with at a New Year's Eve celebration at their hotel and the
married couple return to her now dreary Hartford house where she not only learns
of this affair, but dishearteningly learns that some white boys brutally threw a
rock at Raymond's daughter. The melodramatics pile up and the color tone darkens
as all the confrontational scenes are shot in the interior darkness. When Frank
divorces her, she goes to Raymond for solace. He tells her he'll never be able
to run a business in this town again and that he's going to Baltimore to start
life anew. When she asks if she can visit him, he tells her it's all over-- that
he doesn't have the will or energy to see it through, as he says: "I'm not sure
that would be a good idea."
This is a film that exemplifies excellent craftmanship and boldly has an eye out
for detail in its costumes and art design that is unerring in setting up this
period piece with an accurate look while the story also establishes a projection
of that period's values. What is somewhat missed was the total spirit of Sirk
but not his salient message. "Heaven" remains an intelligent and worthy film but
one that can't climb boundaries other than the ones that Sirk paved out
beforehand. It still holds to the theme that one can't find love when one is so
screwed up that one doesn't know what love is, and it also points out that none
of the characters could communicate with one another. Raymond could never get up
enough courage to tell Cathy he loves her and that he doesn't care what the rest
of the world thinks. She could never tell him she loves him and that she will
give up her way of life to be with him. The gossipers represent the evil there
is in the world, who only act as negations. Frank is the most twisted and
tortured character, but seemingly survives when he chooses his inward desires
over his once pressing need to fit into society; and, his decision seems the
most hopeful notwithstanding that the obstacles he will be up against are
tremendous--because having a homosexual relation in 1958 could have far reaching
consequences. Though not a perfect film, the rich themes remain absorbing and
the performances were intelligently accomplished, though the three main
characters are artificial constructions. The great work of cinematographer
Edward Lachman provides the film with an unforgettably magnificent look, while
Elmer Bernstein's tear-jerking background music gives the film its proper mood.
The film's success comes about because there is so much feeling and intelligence
in it; it raises thought-provoking ideas to consider long afterwards. The film
can be regaled alone just for its magnificently rich color tones. It can appeal
to both a mass and aesthetic audience, though I'm afraid by having a limited
theater showing it can unfairly only reach an art-house audience. Sirk's films
played to a mass audience and were reasonably popular and well-received, and
only later did film critics and filmmakers such as Fassbinder extol the virtues
of a Sirk film and he became discovered by the arthouse crowd.
REVIEWED ON 12/1/2002 GRADE: A -
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
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