Far From Heaven

[Gold Trumpet]

Finally was able to see this movie and with the buzz, I expected it to be one of the best films of the year but it only turned out to be a good film.

My biggest problem with the film is that the film for the entire movie, glorifies itself on recreating the style of a director from the 1950s but really, is that accomplishment really important? Not really because the understanding that it uses Sirk's style is obvious and the film makes no attempt to really get past that at all but show obvious messages of what it is. So so much so that you get the same messages over and over again that the film starts to drag on continously. It is like an idea for a movie that could only really be so long until it just had to start repeating itself. The beneficial points of the movie is just being able to see Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid give some great performances.

~rougerum

[Duck Sauce]

I was so incredibly dissapointed. Other than cinematography, I did not like this movie. I thought that the style took over and didnt really find much substance or anything under the surface. Could anybody explain what was so great about this movie?

[©brad]

I maybe wrong, but I think if you are aware of Douglas Sirk and his melodramas, you would appreciate it much more. Have you seen any Sirk movies?

[Duck Sauce]

I maybe wrong, but I think if you are aware of Douglas Sirk and his melodramas, you would appreciate it much more. Have you seen any Sirk movies?

No I havent seen and Sirk movies... you maybe having seen them, what makes Far From Heaven so great? I am not attacking the movie, just trying to understand what is great and what I am missing.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I enjoyed the movie as a satire and melodrama. I love that weird balance of tones. It kept me thinking the whole time.  "how seriously is this movie taking itself?" I thought it was a powerful story, and an important one. Why is everyone so disappointed?

[Gold Trumpet]

I admit to not having seen any of Sirk Douglas's film but I am well aware of how his movies show the face of being a very truthful melodrama when all that is a facade and just a set up for a satire on the society he is showing in his films. The truth to this film though is that it thinks it has some great revolutionary idea that can let it carry the entire movie but it is just one idea and for me, wore itself down as it only carried Sirk's style instead of trying to create new ones. Also, what point is there is making a movie to basically recreate the style and subject of an old time filmmaker? Yes, I am glad a new awareness has been brought upon Sirk, but this seems like it is deserving of an audience in a different venue because if I want to watch a Sirk film, I will watch a Sirk film.

~rougerum

[MacGuffin]

I admit to not having seen any of Sirk Douglas's film but I am well aware of how his movies show the face of being a very truthful melodrama when all that is a facade and just a set up for a satire on the society he is showing in his films. The truth to this film though is that it thinks it has some great revolutionary idea that can let it carry the entire movie but it is just one idea and for me, wore itself down as it only carried Sirk's style instead of trying to create new ones.

This film takes the issues of today and sets them in an era where the very mention of these subjects were forbidden. By doing that, Haynes has brought thoses subjects to the forefront for today's society that takes them for granted. He shows that there are still race and sexuality issues going on today no matter how far we've come from the 50's.

Also, what point is there is making a movie to basically recreate the style and subject of an old time filmmaker?

You could argue, what's the point of remakes? I'll just watch the original. Truth is, all filmmakers do this to some degree (Isn't that why they screen movies for crew members so they are all on the same page about what style they are going for?). Haynes took this era and filmmaker to the extreme degree for the reasons I stated above.

[Gold Trumpet]

Mac,
1.) That's a good point and I do agree with you in the importance of the movie for going farther than Sirk could have gone back in his time. I do like the movie and all, mainly for performances, but for me, the movie still dragged at the end when trying too hard to ride off of just that one idea. If I was in the same situation, there would have been a tighter focus. Maybe that is my one small complaint, but it rode on my mind all through out the movie and kept me from liking the movie more.

2.) Remakes is a bad name for a movie that is based off another movie but makes it something new. Then it should be called reinvention. For me, when you remake a film or adapt a novel, it is that person reimagining something old into something new and that can be looked at not only on a new level but also a different level. This film not really is a remake in the sense it is trying to be another man's film but just further that man's style. Remakes usually are taking a basic premise for a movie and keeping some of the old movie but making the movie how it would be made for its time so it is different because the style and approach of the 1950s and now is very much different. But one could say that there really have been only 52 original stories and all the stories after that just have been rehashes of those stories in different ways. I think that holds true most for remakes. But i will say, a lot of remakes just suck anyways.

~rougerum

[©brad]

Sirk made movies during the 50s that during the time were thought of as sappy, melodramatic tear jerkers, the women's weepies pictures. It wasn't until the late 60s/early 70s, w/ various new waves going on, that critics began to re-evaluate and really appreciate his work. Now he is considered one of the greats. Critics began deconstructing Sirk movies, amazed at the amount of symbolism present in the elaborate set design, cinematography, composition, and color (technicolor had just came out)
I definetly reccomend All That Heaven Allows or Imitation of Life to check out.

Todd Haynes has been compared to Sirk even before this film. Safe, which I think is just a remarkable film, makes use of a lot of Sirkian techniques. In one scene, when Julliane Moore is eating at a cafe outside with a friend, you notice in the background there is a lot of traffic, and on the sound track you hear the traffic noise really loud. There is also always some sort of humming sound, whether its a vacuum cleaner or refridgerator. The framing too, with her separated by a wall from her family in the other room. Haynes use of composition and framing usually always are commenting on something.

[MacGuffin]

The Los Angeles Times had this nice article/interview with Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore that follows their meeting on "Safe" to working together again on "Far From Heaven":


Filmmaker Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore are nominated for Oscars for their work on "Heaven."

Joined at the script
Actress Julianne Moore and director Todd Haynes share an unusual artistic kinship.

Hearing filmmaker Todd Haynes and actress Julianne Moore talk about the "unusual synchronicity," the "simultaneity" and the "unspoken connection" they share, it's hard not to feel there's some kind of shared voodoo at work -- or at least a common language.

Their latest collaboration, "Far From Heaven," is up for four Academy Awards, including best actress for Moore and best original screenplay for Haynes. Many critics have noted that it is precisely this synergy between writer-director Haynes and Moore's proto-feminist protagonist ("who may be far from heaven but never once out of the director's embrace," as one critic put it) that gives the bittersweet, weepie patterned-after-'50s melodrama its contemporary feel even in an age of cynical and frazzled post-modernity.

But the pair have worked in mysterious ways ever since they came together by chance in the mid-'90s, when Moore stumbled upon a script Haynes had written called "Safe." She got through the first 10 pages and knew something "extraordinary" was at work.

"Unlike anything I'd ever read. I got kind of overwhelmed, and really excited," Moore recalls. She flew to New York to make her case for the lead -- a placid Encino housewife, symbolically named Carol White, who develops mysterious allergic reactions to everything around her, from perfume and gasoline fumes to new furniture. "I really, really wanted it," she says. "I can remember walking down Broadway thinking, 'Now please, I don't wanna blow this audition!' "

Haynes and Moore follow in a tradition almost as old as Hollywood in which a filmmaker finds his muse in a single actress -- from D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish, and Alfred Hitchchock and Ingrid Bergman, to John Cassevetes and Gena Rowlands, and Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. In Haynes and Moore's case, their artistic relationship and mutual admiration began almost as soon as they first met.

Lingering on details and finishing one another's sentences in the fashion of a long-married couple (which they are not), Haynes and Moore in a recent interview described their first meeting as if it were a séance where two kindred spirits found each other.

Moore: "And I met Todd, who was the nicest person in the world. I thought he was gonna be, I don't know, very arty ..."

Haynes (feigning offense): "I try to be arty!"

Moore: "... But he was accessible and warm, not what I expected from somebody who would write this incredibly sad, far-reaching piece -- something that you didn't see in film at the time. But when I auditioned, he only said to me, 'Thank you! Bye bye!' "

Haynes: "I didn't say 'That was great!' because I was speechless. I was utterly swept away. I really haven't had that experience, and I don't know if I ever will again. It was just an amazing, complete interpretation of this character whom I had written but who somehow still remained kind of a conceptual figure in my head. That leap to the act of personifying what's written and making it three-dimensional -- it's scary. And I think that's what any director ultimately wants."

When it landed in theaters in 1995, just as the indie-film phenom was gathering speed, "Safe" had a disturbing and hypnotic effect, embodied above all by the curious plight of Carol White, worn transparent by the ills of late 20th century, rendered physically sick by even the most benign trappings of the modern age. ("Our beautiful new couch? Totally toxic!" is one of Carol's most memorable lines.)

Moore said she could not help but hear Carol's voice in the rhythms of Haynes' language: "His characterization was so complete on page that there didn't seem to me to be any distance between the language and the character.

"That," she adds, "is I think the nature of our connection. I feel I can hear those people that he writes. It's the same experience I had again with 'Far From Heaven' -- where it didn't feel effortful for me because he had already done the work in the script."

For his part, Haynes says, "I don't know that my films would work if I didn't have people like Julianne performing in them. What happens is that she takes an interest in the form and makes the form disappear. And then you have this experience that feels utterly and surprisingly authentic, even though you are watching something completely codified."

The odd couple

Artistic kinship aside, the fits of giggles and playful put-downs that Haynes and Moore trade in teen-speak (She: "Freak!" He: "Shut up!") suggest their genuine warmth toward one another.

Still, you wonder, because at least on the face of things they make for an unlikely pairing. Valley-bred Haynes is a filmmaker of ideas known for his obsession with inventing fresh cinematic idioms to address the politics of everyday life, with half-a-dozen features under his belt -- some hotly controversial, like his 1987 short-film debut, "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story," cast entirely with Barbie dolls and blocked from release to this day by a lawsuit from the late singer's brother.

Moore, who grew up shuttling among various U.S. locations, Europe and Panama, is a respected character actress favored by the likes of Robert Altman, the Cohen Brothers and Ridley Scott and the onetime star of a "Jurassic Park" sequel; she's a bona fide Hollywood star with strong indie roots who remains impossible to pigeonhole.

His body of work has spurred as much critical support as outrage; hers has been acknowledged with four Oscar nominations since 1998, including two this year, for her "Far From Heaven" lead performance and a supporting turn in "The Hours."

And when the two find themselves in the plush lobby of the Chateau Marmont dissecting the nature of their collaboration, you cannot help but notice that they even look a little mismatched: Haynes casually hip in a modish leather jacket and Puma bag, Moore exuding Old World chic in full Dolce & Gabbana garb and high-heel sandals fastened with velvet ribbons.

Unusual for a director-actor team, Haynes and Moore discuss the overall arc of the story and the character only at the beginning of the shoot, and never hold council before each scene; both say there is no need for that.

"There is something extremely shared," Haynes says, "not only about the way we see things -- films and stories and conflicts that we're drawn to, probably from different directions -- but also Julianne's understanding of film as a visual medium of ideas."

After "Safe" Haynes and Moore went their separate ways -- he went on to make his 1998 glam-rock opus "Velvet Goldmine"; she found her footing in a series of acclaimed projects directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and Ridley Scott -- but "there was no question in my mind that I wanted to work with Julianne again and do something really special with her," says Haynes.

When he sat down in the spring of 2000 to write "Far From Heaven," the long-planned homage to his favorite '50s director, Douglas Sirk, he wrote his quietly explosive story with Moore in mind. He says in retrospect that in Moore's performance both the highly stylized framework of his picture and its radical examinations of the power struggles between sexes, were sublimated to devastating effect.

Though "Safe" and "Far From Heaven" are almost a decade apart, collaborating on them "wasn't different at all," Moore says. "There's something incredibly relaxing about working with someone whose vision you can rely on. With Todd, I always feel like we're on the same page."

Even off the set, the two often find themselves in freaky synchronicity.

Asked about their age, they bring their heads together and intone in unison, "Forty-two!" Born exactly one month apart, they share the same cultural references and are known to have been hooked on the same songs: "He left this message on my answering machine, and it was Bobby Sherman singing, 'Julie, Do Ya Love Me,' " Moore says. "People used to sing that to me when I was 6, so I almost started crying when I heard it."

Their shared trajectory to increasing recognition may well reach its twin denouement at the Academy Awards ceremony. But with or without Oscars, Haynes and Moore say they will rest contented.

Says Moore: "Both 'Safe' and 'Far From Heaven' were about things I felt deeply about, and it's wonderful to see that other people feel the same way. But the experience of making them -- that's what I value."

[Mesh]

The truth to this film though is that it thinks it has some great revolutionary idea that can let it carry the entire movie but it is just one idea and for me, wore itself down as it only carried Sirk's style instead of trying to create new ones.

This is a confusing sentence.

I doubt you'd get Haynes admit to any kind of revolutionary aspect to the making of Far From Heaven.  It's blank, straight-faced homage, pure and simple, and damn fine homage at that.  Also, you criticize Haynes for failing to "create new" styles—but that was the whole point of Far From Heaven.  It was about 50s films, how 50s films told stories, what they said about 50s society.  Secondarily, it was Haynes' challenge to himself to play by Sirkian rules of filmic narration....you can't fault a film for being Sirkian when its whole point was to be just that.

[godardian]

Sirk made movies during the 50s that during the time were thought of as sappy, melodramatic tear jerkers, the women's weepies pictures. It wasn't until the late 60s/early 70s, w/ various new waves going on, that critics began to re-evaluate and really appreciate his work. Now he is considered one of the greats. Critics began deconstructing Sirk movies, amazed at the amount of symbolism present in the elaborate set design, cinematography, composition, and color (technicolor had just came out)
I definetly reccomend All That Heaven Allows or Imitation of Life to check out.

Todd Haynes has been compared to Sirk even before this film. Safe, which I think is just a remarkable film, makes use of a lot of Sirkian techniques. In one scene, when Julliane Moore is eating at a cafe outside with a friend, you notice in the background there is a lot of traffic, and on the sound track you hear the traffic noise really loud. There is also always some sort of humming sound, whether its a vacuum cleaner or refridgerator. The framing too, with her separated by a wall from her family in the other room. Haynes use of composition and framing usually always are commenting on something.

Bless you for the Safe acclaim. It's one of my most beloved movies, part of a small handful that I really feel changed my perspective, on movies and on life.

For the person who started this thread: If you watched the film on DVD, it would probably address some of the questions/criticisms to delve into the many extras (this is one of the most generous non-Criterion DVDs I can ever remember). Haynes's commentary is pretty revealing about sources and his inspiration/intentions in making the film.

There are quite a few essays by Laura Mulvey (particularly in the liner notes of the All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind DVDs) specifying what about Sirk was so special and so subversive. Martin Scorsese talks about it in his Personal Journey.

I'll agree with the people who said/implied that Haynes replicated the Sirk style and did it in an unironic way to show so that we as an audience would relate emotionally, see the artifice, and be forced to examine how far we have/haven't come from the problems that occur in the film. Haynes has talked about how emotional engagement with films shouldn't work- after all, we know it's fake, we know it's "lying"- and yet it does work, sometimes spectacularly. I think he celebrates that engagement, but he also plays with it a bit.

Far from Heaven was one of my favorite films last year, and Haynes is one of my favorite directors.

[MacGuffin]

A small item that make your pants cream, godardian. I still have my blue promotional surgical mask with "SAFE" written across the front. The theater gave them to us on opening night.

[©brad]

A small item that make your pants cream, godardian. I still have my blue promotional surgical mask with "SAFE" written across the front. The theater gave them to us on opening night.

haha, wow. really? that's cool. i want one.

[godardian]

A small item that make your pants cream, godardian. I still have my blue promotional surgical mask with "SAFE" written across the front. The theater gave them to us on opening night.

Ya know when Homer Simpson drools at the thought of a donut? That's me right now.