MOVIE CLUB: FAR FROM HEAVEN
From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: Far From Perfect

According to the "Which John Hughes Character Are You?" website, I'm Blaine, Andrew McCarthy’s character from "Pretty in Pink." Sadly, I don't know what that means. Aside from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” I am shamefully unfamiliar with the 80s-defining John Hughes filmography. I am also too young to have appreciated the films of Douglas Sirk, the spirit of whose films Todd Haynes took as inspiration for his new film "Far From Heaven." Or so I've read in every review of the film I’ve come across. Todd Haynes, born in 1961, is himself too young to have seen any of Sirk's films during their original theatrical run, but that hasn't stopped him from mounting his own revisionist Sirk picture. As a period piece -- and is there a better word to describe a film which takes as its period a time-specific film genre? --"Far From Heaven" succeeds. The tone, the look, and the emotional pitch of the film are all consistently realized. And Haynes and his actors do a good job of defining the film's tone before they start subverting it. In previous films, I’ve found Julianne Moore a rather cold actress. She’d come across as bright, but humorless; and lacking in emotional presence (yes, I’ve seen “Short Cuts” and “Vanya on 42nd Street” and “Boogie Nights,” and these are the very films I’m talking about) . She doesn't seem to have an improvisational bone in her body. Her role in "Far From Heaven," which asks her to play a "type," is perfect for her. To some degree, the role needs to be performed, and Moore, who seems to wear her theatre training on her sleeve, does the job. Dennis Quaid is good, too, as Moore's recently un-closeted homosexual husband. But all of the performances eventually fall victim to the film's conceit: that a subversion of the 1950s’ ideal (as seen through the lens of Hollywood; and as, the film seems to suggest, it is preserved in our collective memories) is relevant to today's film-going audience. As nice a job as Haynes does in reconstructing the alternate universe of celluloid 1950s suburbia, it never felt like anything more than a formal exercise. Haynes seemed careful not to disrupt the reality he and his actors had created; but I think the film could have used a bit more blood in its veins. Haynes has made a film that would have scandalized the viewers of Sirk's films. But what has he made for the rest of us? Next to films like Todd Solondz's "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness," which provide skewering satire of present day suburbia and which ask us to confront our own hypocrisies and shallow, materialistic fantasies, Haynes's film satirizes a time and place that never even existed (except on TV). Haynes lets us laugh at the hypocrisy and moral backwardness of a make-believe time, but the audience he implicates in all this has been dead for decades. The other problem the movie suffers from is a lack of chemistry between Moore and Dennis Haysbert. Haysbert plays Moore's black gardener, a kind, strong, wise and brave man to whom Moore's character confides her fears and frustrations and whom she eventually falls in love with, much to the dismay of the entire town. Haysbert is likeable in a role that asks him to be, essentially, a perfect human being; but he doesn't bring enough charisma to a role that requires him to get Moore's character to break countless social taboos. To be honest, I'm not sure any actor would have been able to do it. Not with Haynes's script, anyway. Intentionally, I suppose, Haynes's script lacks sex. It implies sexuality, but not enough to sustain the narrative. And I wish he had made the sex more potent. In the end, Haynes seemed more concerned with re-creating the "reality" of a Sirk picture than with the emotional reality of his characters. It may be that those more familiar with 1950's melodramas, particularly the work of Sirk, will find the film a relevant satire, or an important commentary on the 1950s ideal. I found it unexciting. It was "interesting," but not moving. I know that Adam liked it more than I did, so I'm interested to see what it was that won him over. And I'm not sure how many other people have seen this film or even plan to see it, and I wonder if we'll miss the lively discussion that "Bowling for Columbine" and "8 Mile" provoked. And I agree with Eric that there's no need to limit ourselves to prestige pictures and arty films. I'm certainly willing to open up a discussion about "Reign of Fire" which I just saw on DVD the other night. I won't bother to post my reaction to the film just now, but if anyone has an opinion about it, I'd love to hear it.