Far from Heaven (2002)

This is a question of taste. What I dislike in Far from Heaven is that it tries to catch a certain atmosphere by dwelling lovingly on details such as the cars of the fifties, the furniture, the trite cocktail parties (I thought we all decided we didn't need that anymore)..

Far from Heaven is about sensibility, about freedom. But why choose to celebrate an era that choked people to death and place in it characters so much lacking in expression, characters so far from what the director intended them to be? There is no freedom or even sensibility here to be experienced in the first degree.

The freedom I see in Far from heaven is the freedom of a director given almost carte blanche to wallow in detailed interior decoration, and the freedom to remake a very elaborate 50's postcard. Apparently the director thought this would be enough.

The sensibility is invested in over-emphasized 50's interiors. The obsession with form is too much for my taste, although I must admit this is one of the most detailed 50's environments I ever saw in a movie.

The questions that are raised by the dramatic events in the film are all avoided. The relationships are superficial and I found myself regularly wondering about the motives of different characters.

Take Frank Whitaker for example. He is a strange mixture of the painful search for sexual identity, total inability to express himself (in spite of the fact that he clearly has been a latent homosexual for a long time), a consequent rigidity towards his children and wife and then the ability to quickly and instinctively initiate sexual and emotional liaisons with other men. He also is quite violent.

Considering this is supposed to be a man with a whole gambit of emotions and a lifelong experience with playing something he isn't, he is seriously lacking in means to express himself and also quite poor in variety of emotions. In other words, the character set down by Dennis Quaid is much too colorless to be believed.

The same can be said of Mrs. Whitaker, who is so naive as to make you mad. It is really too much to swallow. This woman just stands with a wide-eyed smile, looking on while her pretty home is destroyed by a husband that has nothing to say to her, except smack her in the face ("he didn't mean to..."). Oh come on.

The blacks in the movie are nothing more than shameless Uncle Tom cardboard stand-ins. After Monster's Ball, this is another movie that is insensitive not so much in what it has to say but more in what it leaves out. Isn't refusal to depict human drama in anything other than gross simplification the same as refusal to acknowledge?

In my opinion this movie is at best immature. It is a two hour long demonstration of the art of building beautiful sets.

Fmovies: Far From Heaven has been explained as a "woman's film," and a "surefire tear jerker," but in fact it's intended for the kind of woman who would cry at the sight of a washing machine that wobbles a bit during its spin cycle.

Todd Haynes has lovingly perfected the surface of this film with the skill of a master mortician. However, beneath its perfect surface, it's equally dead. All of Haynes' energy has gone towards recreating the details and trappings of a past era of (let's face it) relatively minor film making, and there's no energy left to imbue the characters with power, believability or any trace of interior life. Therefore, Kathleen can utter ridiculous lines some "ice please" after she's just been belted by her husband and, without losing her pasted-on smile for a second, can make chirpy little jokes about her husband's disgustingly ugly drunken behavior at the party that she has spent most of the film (and perhaps most of her life) planning. As game as Moore's acting is, her character is like a windup doll.

Quaid's part is even worse. Although I like him as an actor, he has no clue how to portray the inner conflict of a gay man trapped in a suburban marriage, trapped in the 1950's. For someone who feels "despicable," he somehow has no difficulty ogling a cute blond kid in full public view -- in front of both his own wife and the kid's parents. And though he's already been caught by both the police and his wife in flagrante delicto, he has no problem getting it on with the blond boy in his hotel room while his wife reads Cosmo by the poolside (we don't see this happen, but it's clearly implied). This is simply ridiculous.

Dennis Haysbert's character is forced (by the script) into similarly disingenuous behavior. We're expected to believe that he's a Miro scholar/botanist/MBA and man about about town, yet he somehow thinks he could bring a whiter-than-white upper class woman into a "negro" blues bar and the patrons would be "really friendly"? And he's surprised when his fellow Blacks shower him with the same one-dimensional hatred that all of Kathleen's friends shower upon her?

Haynes seems to view the 50's as if they occurred 1000 years ago; the characters seem not so much as from a different time as from a different species. The result: a potential story of tremendous personal conflict and suffering ends up a curiously uninvolving pastiche, although one in Amazing Living Technicolor. This is perhaps the only film ever made in which the leaves are more alive than the characters.

Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) has it all, a handsome husband (Dennis Quaid), Two wonderful children (Ryan Ward & Lindsay Andretta), a loyal housekeeper (Viola Davis) and her close best friend (Patricia Clarkson). Everything for Cathy goes well until her husband starts questions his own sexually. Things are slowly changing for Cathy, when she meets her new gardener (Dennis Haysbert). Which her Gardener is a nice, caring African American man. Cathy's wonderful life is only an illusion and she forced to live a lie or following her heart.

Written and Directed by Todd Haynes (Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine) made an genuinely well done melodrama with plenty of style and substance. Moore gives an beautiful, touching performance. Quaid in his best performance yet, which he's outstanding. Haysbert is terrific as Cathy's Gardener. Excellent production designs, lush cinematography and an beautiful music score are the highlight of this film.

DVD has an sharp anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) transfer and an fine DTS 5.1 Surround Sound (Also in Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound). DVD has an featurette, a half-hour "Anatomy of a Scene", an featurette with Julianne Moore & the Director and more. This film was nominated for four Oscars including Best Actress, Best Original Score by the late Elmer Bernstein (Bringing Out the Dead, The Maginificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird), Best Cinematography by Edward Lachman (Less Than Zero, Selena, The Virgin Suicides) and Best Original Screenplay. This film is a must-see. This film is a loving tribute to the 1950's melodrama films. Executive Produced by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean's Eleven-2001, Out of Sight, Solaris-2002) and George Clooney (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night and Good Luck, Insomnia-2002). (**** ½/*****).

Far from Heaven fmovies. Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid effectively inhabit their roles in "Far From Heaven," an engrossing flashback to an affluent northeastern suburb, Hartford CT in 1957-8. Quaid is Frank Whitaker, top sales exec in a company meeting the voracious needs of American consumers for the latest in gadgets and appliances. His wife, Cathy, is so much the high profile model for the typical stay-at-home, support your hubby, take care of the kids mom that she is shadowed by the local gossip reporter and her photographer. She thinks she has the perfect marriage and two terrific if not invariably best behaved kids. Both, however, are too interesting to be mistaken as a large screen resurrection of a 50s sitcom couple.

Cathy can't catch the clue when she bails Frank out of the police station and he mutters angrily about the arresting officers mistaking him for a "loiterer." A loiterer in a neat business suit with a topcoat in Hartford? Only one kind of well-dressed character like that attracted police attention in those days.

Dispensing good cheer everywhere, Cathy decides to bring dinner to her hardworking-at-night husband (no spoiler here, every media review has this part). And what should she find? Frank is in the arms of a man, kissing him actually, clothing in disarray.

Today, a presumably straight spouse or lover being gay, secretly, isn't a taboo subject. It was in Cathy and Frank's time and, in fact, no movie from that period would have touched this subject with a ten-foot boom mike. "An Affair to Remember" was risque enough.

Cathy insists Frank get help and James Rebhorn in a brief role as psychiatrist Dr. Bowman explains the most modern therapeutic approaches to "converting" Frank to exclusive heterosexuality. This was in the days when homosexuality was an official diagnosed mental illness.

In what could have been a familiar variation of the white/black awkward beginnings of friendship seen in Sidney Poitier movies but which in this instance has a refreshing originality, Cathy befriends gardener Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert). An attractive and prominent white woman being seen in public with a black man in the South at this time would have led to probably horrific repercussions. Here we get to see 1950s racist northern suburbia, people who decry Arkansas obduracy (there's a brief shot of President Eisenhower on TV announcing the despatch of the 101st Airborne Division to confront the state's mad governor at Little Rock High School) while dispensing their own venom. No guns, no lynchings, no white sheets - just an insidious degradation of blacks, reducing them to actual invisibility when convenient.

The friendship between Cathy and Raymond is at first tentative and it grows with affecting tenderness. So does the shocked anger of the wealthy gaggle in Frank and Cathy's social circle.

Is Frank cured of his "illness?" Does racial tolerance and respect for diversity seep into Hartford's tony neighborhood? Does everyone live happily ever after? Go see the film. The mid-afternoon packed audience in Manhattan's Lincoln Plaza Cinema broke into applause at the end.

Viola Davies turns in a small but critically important role as the Whitaker's maid, Sybil. Fine acting.

Director Todd Haynes allowed Moore and Quaid to make their roles real, involving, and anguished and funny in turn. Both stars deserve Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.

Rooted in the 50s in many wa

While certainly this film is about race and sexual preference, I think its observations are actually much more universal. What it is about - and so many of the movies it references are also about - is how social structures work hard to prevent you from stepping outside your little world. People work hard to control attitudes towards outsiders - in this case, black people and homosexuals - in a negative way that not only keeps them out, but also keeps you in. Many people just don't like it when you seek something from the outside and will be manipulative to keep it so. Witness Patricia Clarkson, who is so manipulative that she has to remind Jualianne Moore how old and dear friends they - oldest and dearest - in such a way that it is a threat more than a comfort. And the film does this within the conventions of the genre it is putting itself in. In many ways, it merely uses the tawdry, cliched imagery of Hollywood soapers in such a way that, if you are not familiar, they may appear to be cliches here. But they are very intentional. And in this way, everything is controlled about the film - reactions, colors, everything. No wonder the characters need to break out of their worlds.

A man and his wife enter the office of a man who could possibly save the man from a life threatening illness. THe process includes many visits with a psychiatrist and possibly some electro-shock therapy. No, this person does not have schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder. This man is a homosexual.

Yes, it is true, this man is considered "sick" but that is just one of the many skewed attitudes of the 1950's that director Todd Haynes brings to light in Far From Heaven. Julianne Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, the wife of Frank Whitaker, Dennis Quaid, who are the proud parents of two children. The live the life that people envied. A nice home, money, success, and happiness. All of that comes crashing down when Cathy discovers her husband is not who he really is.

Cathy goes to Frank's work to drop off some dinner only to discover that her husband is in the arms of another man. Frank says that he is "sick" and wants treatment. Cathy, the "super wife" is behind him 100 percent, as if he really had an illness to beat. Frnak is ashamed and doesn't want support, just some privacy while he goes through session after session of therapy to try and make him "normal".

To add to this difficulty, the family gardener passes away and his son Raymond, Dennis Haysbert, takes over. Cathy comes to confide in Raymond and find peace of mind in his attitude and his overall good nature. The neighborhood looks down on their friendship and casts a shadow on the household. Raymond, a black man, is much like Cathy, seeing not color, but people. Even in New Haven, Connecticut, the feeling of white superiority still runs through the veins of its inhabitants.

The movie from start to finish is wonderful. It is a roller-coaster of emotions. Moore, Quaid, and Haysbert give fantastic performances. Even Patricia Clarkson, who plays Cathy one true friend in the neighborhood gives a delightful performance.

It's not just the acting that gives this movie it's lift off of the ground. Haynes direction and the art direction of the film create a pallet of colors and emotions that set the mood for each seen. The film opens in autumn. The leaves are shades of red, yellow, and orange, a true autumnal foliage like you would see on a Vermont postcard. The clothing is a perfect time capsule of the 50's. Haynes also uses a lot of colored lights to directly influence the mood of a scene. The green neon light of the gay bar Frank enters gives a strange feel like an alien world. The blue light that comes in through the windows in his office at night and in their home after a party means something dramatic is taking place.

Elmer Bernstein has racked up 14 nominations for his music, including a win for Throughly Modern Millie. His score for this film is the current that pushes the story along. Like so many great composers, he doesn't create music but a character. Everything is different with the right score to back up a great story.A story and a script that Haynes wrote so beautifully. He captured the lingo that kids used in the 50's and gave us a look at how kind people can be and how despicable some are.

The issues that Haynes tackles in the film are still around today, just not taken so seriously. It is hard to think that only 50 years ago, homosexuals were looked at as sick people and the African-American community was still not welcome. To this day there are still hints of this feeling around the country, but most is left to be talked about in the p