Went to see “Far From Heaven” last night and I’m still trying to sort out my opinion of it.
While I think it was accurately detailed, well-acted (particularly by Dennis Quaid) and nicely recreated the look and feel of a 1950s movie, I had some misgivings. Including:
Some of the dialogue seemed cliched to me, like what you’d expect someone in a '50s movie to say. And that might be the point: writer and director Todd Haynes appeared to me to be creating a movie that (except for its content about a man struggling with his homosexuality and a biracial couple) looked as if it had been made in the '50s and then locked away in a vault for 40 years. Yet the cliched dialogue was still jarring to me.
Just before Raymond Deagan’s (Dennis Haysbert) daughter is chased and injured by the three boys, they and others are shown playing football. This after a scene where the Whitaker family is shown celebrating Christmas. Youth football season doesn’t stretch past early December in most areas. They’d be playing basketball this time of year. A quibble, yet it still seemed out of place.
With all the attention played to creating the look of a '50s movie, why film it in color? Even the titles and music recalled conventions from that era. And while Haynes did set up some great scenes putting Quiad in shadows suggesting film noir, I think the film might have been more striking if he had filmed in in black and white.
There was much about the movie I liked. And bottom line, it’s thought-provoking.
I think the point of the film was to recreate a 1950s film with characters in it acting like they were from the 1950s, but with everyone watching it knowing that things really weren’t all that neat and tidy.
I think the color of the film was one of its best features. It was beautifully shot. One of the reasons that the kids were still playing football was to give the director more opportunities to use some rich colors.
Not only does football season not last that long, but neither does fall.
I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I have seen stills from it. A lot of it looks exactly like a Douglas Sirk movie.
I believe that Written on the Wind is Sirk’s most famous movie, and it was the main inspiration for Far From Heaven. And yes, it was shot in color, and the color was overbearing and way over the top, just like everything else in the movie. It’s definitely worth checking out; it’s neat to look at and is filled with unintentional humor. (Unfortunately, a lot of the unintentional humor is at Rock Hudson’s expense, since much of the plot involves his refusing to get married or settle down with the right woman.)
I saw the movie this weekend. The dialogue was jarring to me too, at first, because it was so unreal and stereotypically '50s. It became clear that it was intended to contrast with the underlying subject matter which, while it may have been addressed in film during the '50s, I’ve never seen a movie that actually did deal with homosexuality from that period. The relationship between the Whitakers was so artificial, (especially the cooing and flirting between Quaid and Moore in Miami), that it made their denial of the issues they were dealing with that much darker.
It was an excellent movie. The colors were so lush, much like what old Technicolor looks like now, and the dialogue seemed to come right out of a '50s/early '60s sitcom.
One point which was clear all through the movie, but especially at the end, was that nice, caring people can still be capable of bigotry. When Julianne Moore was explaining her ability to talk to Dennis Haysbert, her friend, Patricia Clarkson, who was so supportive, immediately showed her distaste for the idea of even being friendly with a black man. Plus the guy at the party who made the comment about there not being any blacks in Connecticut, despite the fact that all the servants were black, really brought home the ignorance people are capable of, without any intentional malice.
It’s a good movie. In the end, though, I was a bit disappointed that it was about 50 year old fictional archetypes instead of being about real people. Let’s face it, poking holes in the non-existent 1950s ideal suburban lifestyle is a) not very difficult, and b) done to death. Wouldn’t it be a tad more challenging to poke holes in some modern-day myths instead?
Still, the acting was wonderful, as was the cinematography.
One thing that whooshed over the heads of many viewers at the screening I saw is that Moore’s “tolerant” tragic housewife is still very limited in her worldview. She expands it enough to include the gardener, but her husband is still a monster to her. (Racial attitudes were beginning to change in the 50s; sexual attitudes would not change for another decade or more.)
JonScribe: Most big budget movies from the 50s were in color. That’s what distinguished them from TV!
Let’s see now, a movie that shows how evil, uptight and repressed the 1950s are, and that paints American suburbs as a place filled with people who are suffocated by conformity, living a lie, and suppressing their deepest desires.
Wow, how original! Hollywood hasn’t made a movie with THOSE themes since, oh, about five minutes ago!
Honestly, “Far From Heaven” was the most appallingly predictable, self-congratulatory piece of crud since “American Beauty” (which ALSO made all the critics’ top ten lists and ALSO won loads of awards).