FAR FROM HEAVEN is the lovingly crafted new film from Todd Haynes (VELVET GOLDMINE), about an upper class socialite house wife (the great Julianne Moore from JURASSIC PARK PART 2 and ASSASSINS) dealing with the shameful prejudices and social pressures of the time. When she discovers that her husband (one of the Quaids, I think Randy) kissing a man, she tries to be loving and understanding about it. Her friends joke about her liberalism and call her “Red” but she naively deals with it as a medical problem, and brings him to a doctor to be “cured”. Soon she strikes up a friendship with her black gardener (the president from that stupid tv show 24) and again tests the limits of her liberalism when she finds that both whites and blacks scorn their innocent relationship.
Part of what makes it work is that the styles of acting, the dissolve-heavy editing, and the music by Elmer Bernstein are all taken directly from the films of that time period. It’s as if Haynes had travelled back in time and created a movie that he wishes they could’ve made back then, dealing with issues no one wanted to face, ones that are still embarassingly relevant today. It’s all a perfect re-creation of the melodramas of Douglas Sirk.
Oh, who am I fooling. I would never have known that if everybody else didn’t already say it. I don’t even know what that means. I’ve never seen a Douglas Sirk movie. Have you? I don’t even know which ones he directed. There is a scene where the Quaid goes to see THREE FACES OF EVE in a movie theater. Hey man, I’ve seen that and I can prove it, I reviewed it a long time ago. So I figured hey, maybe that’s a Sirk movie. But no luck, I looked it up. I haven’t seen any of those movies, and haven’t even heard of most of them, or remember what they were now that I am not on imdb anymore.
To be fair, I bet half of these other clowns don’t know who Douglas Sirk is either. They probaly just read it in the press kit and then wrote it like they knew what they were talking about. At least I had to read other reviews to find out, I don’t get the press kits. (more…)
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