Far from Heaven (2002)

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kinolieber
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Date: 18 September 2002
Summary: Mesmerizing

Todd Haynes has done it again. After Velvet Goldmine blew my mind with his deeply affectionate meditation on the glam era he has now re-created one of those soap opera films of the 50's like Sirk's "All That Heaven Allows" . In a brilliant twist, and much as he did with Velvet Goldmine, he takes the conventions of an era and applies them, without the slightest smirk of condescension, to a story that could never have been told at that time, and yet works beautifully as a period piece as well as a comment on our contemporary American self-delusions.

The film has every detail perfectly right, from the dialogue, to the fashions and production design, from the music by Elmer Bernstein to the autumn leaves swirling everywhere: it's like taking a cinematic time warp to 50's suburbia. But what really amazes, is that the film has such emotional power. Much of that power is due to Julianne Moore's performance. She transforms herself in a way that I have only seen Meryl Streep do. While never stepping outside the conventions of Hayne's story and the conventions of the genre, she nevertheless communicates the struggle and heartbreak of a good and loving person trapped in a community of fear, status seeking, prejudice, hypocrisy, and murderous hate. Sound like any place you've been to recently?

I don't know if this film will be appreciated by general audiences. An audience mostly too young to have lived through that era, or not familiar enough with film history to appreciate the meticulous accuracy of Haynes' homage might find the whole thing bizarrely sentimental. On the other hand, the film has a flow that is mesmerizing, a very quiet but powerful intensity that I found completely involving. It's heartbreaking, not just because of how the story plays out, but because of the film's insistant comment on the unhappiness lurking beneath life in the 'greatest country on earth'.

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