Difficult to imagine a movie that’s more of a contrast to the afternoon’s fare than writer/director Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, a highly stylized marital melodrama set in 1957. Julieanne Moore, Oscar-nominated for her performance, plays the wife in an odd triangle with husband Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert (yes, 24’s President).
Haynes, an idiosyncratic Art House filmmaker, takes all the elements of a classic ’50 melodrama–an IMDB reviewer suggests Douglas Sirk and his Magnificent Obsession as the model–and pours in plot elements that could never have been used in that time: homosexuality and interracial romance. The dialog, the sets and clothing, the imagery and coloring are used to emulate a bygone era in a way that simple historical films don’t even attempt to match; if anything, most filmmakers consciously avoid this and aim a modern eye at the past.
Moore, blonde wig and perfect flowing dresses, is the image of a ’50s high society wife, so much so that the local newspaper’s society writer and photographer show up at her home in the opening act to document home and lifestyle. The article, by noting her “kindness to negroes,” provides the opening notes of that plot conflict; eventually, her friendship with Haysbert becomes the primary gossip in their town. Quaid’s journey of self-discovery begins in the opening scene after he’s arrested for DUI but his self-described sickness does not have the same devestating impact. Possibly this is because Haynes is homosexual and not black but I suppose his desire to contrast private and public shame required one or the other to be treated as he did.
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