Hey folks, Harry here... I remember during this year's Toronto Film Festival, that Roger Ebert wrote quite beautifully about a film that was being maligned by some critics, just as he was praising it. The difference between him and the others was that Roger had actually seen IMITATION OF LIFE and they had seen stills in a history book, maybe. Or worse, they saw that film and for some insane reason feel that this is that, its obviously different. Well, the real lord of Chicago cinema, Capone, is chiming in. We'll find out if Roger was crazy or on the money. Here ya go...
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here. I just purchased by tickets the Butt-Numb-a-Thon 4, my plane tickets to Austin are in hand, and I’ve just seen a true contender for best film of 2002. Things are looking up.
This past April, when I was among the fortunate few to get one of the earliest looks at ROAD TO PERDITION, I was also invited to a super-secret test screening of Todd Haynes’ new work, FAR FROM HEAVEN, on the exact same day. For obvious reason, I feel I made the right choice, but it was a tough choice. Having now seen both films, it’s a strange and satisfying coincidence that two films that will absolutely be on my Best of 2002 list were at my disposal on the same day seven months ago. I’ve always liked Haynes’ work as a writer-director (SAFE, POISON, SUPERSTAR, and even parts of VELVET GOLDMINE), but FAR FROM HEAVEN is in another realm of greatness, both in Haynes own filmography and in films I’ve seen in recent memory.
Julianne Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, a 1950s ideal woman. A housewife, mother, and socialite in a well-off family helmed by her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid), whose biggest problem appears to a small flask in his desk drawer. The perfect nuclear family is completed by a young boy and girl, as well as a black maid (Viola Davis). Frank is the top salesman at his firm and Cathy is the envy of all her friends in the community. She’s considered somewhat liberal because she allows her self on occasion to be seen in public talking to her black groundskeeper, Raymond (“24’s” Dennis Haysbert). With their well-kept grounds surrounding their perfect home, the Whitakers are the all-out perfect American family for the first few minutes of the film...until we see Frank go into a gay bar. And it’s with this scene that I realized what Haynes was up to. For any of you who have seen Otto Preminger’s 1962 film ADVISE AND CONSENT, you have a pretty good idea of the look and feel of the bar that Haynes captures. He’s not trying to show us what a gay bar would have looked like in the 1950s; he wants us to see how it might have been portrayed in a ‘50s film. That is the task put forth in FAR FROM HEAVEN: How would a film with big stars have portrayed such controversial topics as homosexuality and race relations. Haynes uses classic camera angles, lighting, art direction, music cues, and performances to weave his story of the traditional American family on the eve of destruction.
Moore and Quaid are absolutely crucial to the success of this film. Haynes’ dialogue is, at times, deliberately cheesy. This is time in film, where kids called their father “Pop,” and when husbands repeatedly refer to their wives as “darling” or “my beautiful wife.” The ice under this family is so thin, you can see fish beneath their feet. What’s most amazing about the film is that Haynes rarely betrays his setting. When Cathy pays a surprise visit to her husband working late at the office and finds him in a lip-lock with another man, Cathy is almost unable to express her emotions. Cathy doesn’t launch into a obscenity-laden tirade because the times won’t allow her to. This film is set in and made in the 1950s, if you buy the premise. She doesn’t seem angry she just wants him to stop being gay by going to a doctor to be “cured.” While hubbie is off making money and getting cured, a pained Cathy turns for comfort to Raymond, and the two are spotted out together. All hell, are you ready to break loose?
It’s difficult to explain in words what Haynes has accomplished with FAR FROM HEAVEN. On a technical level, his ability to mimic the look of films made in the 1950s is only surpassed by his ability to break from that look at exactly the right time. He has also worked tirelessly with his actors so that each hits exactly the right note, a fiery combination of 1950s idealism and innocence and 21st century pain and conflict. It seemed obvious to me that Quaid is channeling Rock Hudson here on a couple different levels; Haysbert beautifully plays a role that Sidney Poitier would have been cast in 50 years ago; and Julianne Moore embodies the virgin-whore matron, who makes every effort to put on a good face to fool her friends and neighbors while her family falls apart. “Transcendent” is the best word to describe FAR FROM HEAVEN. Todd Haynes succeeds in transcending the source material; the actors transcend the deliberately sugar-coated words they speak; the whole film transcends nearly every other film I’ve seen this year. This is the movie that Haynes has been leading us toward, and the result is one of the finest films of the year.
Capone
You want my Butt-Numb-A-Thon Ticket? Beg me for it! I need to laugh!
