Far From Heaven

With more than just a nod to Douglas Sirk, writer/director Todd Haynes examines a suburban housewife's unraveling in Far From Heaven. Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) is a woman who, on the surface, seems to have it all; upon closer look, we see her world is crumbling. Hartford, Connecticut couldn't look more beautiful onscreen (especially as filmed by cinematographer Ed Lachmann, who captures the brightness of Sirk's hues with wonderful intensity), but the small-mindedness of its townspeople ultimately turn it into a prison for Cathy.

The film begins with an overhead shot of Cathy's blue-and-white station wagon pulling into the driveway of her leafy suburban house. Surrounded by her two adoring children, Cathy bustles inside to get ready for a dinner party her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) and her are scheduled to attend. However, this Leave It To Beaver facade swiftly vanishes when Cathy is called down to the Hartford Police Station to bail an inebriated Frank out of jail.

Things further deteriorate when Cathy catches Frank in a romantic embrace with another man late night at his office. Her world spinning out of control, she turns for comfort and friendship to her new gardener, a sensitive widower named Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert). Unfortunately for Cathy, Raymond is also black. Although their romance is never requited, the mere fact of their friendship elicits unrelenting prejudice from their peers, which ultimately drives them apart.

In Far From Heaven, Haynes has effectively replaced Sirk's subtext and made it the movie's text. This inevitably leads to the question as to whether or not this encourages a certain ironic distance between the film and its audience. Upon seeing it twice, I am inclined to think not, largely due to the astounding performances delivered by Moore, Quaid, Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson, and Viola Davis.

With a series of looks and gestures, Julianne Moore’s Cathy Whitaker conveys more about the inner life of a woman whose life is falling apart than the entire cast of The Hours. Nevermind that The Hours stars Moore (along with Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman, wearing that oft-noted prosthetic nose that is almost certain to vault her up to the podium on Oscar night), who, to be fair, gives a solid performance as yet another suffering 1950s housewife. Upon closer examination, however, one is hard-pressed not to note a crucial difference between her performances, or more accurately, between the two films. Whereas the women of The Hours (especially Streep) go to great lengths to articulate their feelings in most precise of terms (with an overwrought Philip Glass score in the background to emphasize their pain, just in case we missed the point), Kathy Whitaker never quite breaks away from the '50s-tinged dialogue that all of Haynes's characters are saddled with. Yet instead of making them seem inauthentic, these words, and the manner in which they are uttered, effectively convey the characters' inability to fully attach themselves to the situation they're in, to wholly acknowledge the degree to which their worlds are crumbling. Quaid, Haysbert, Clarkson, and Davis also turn in astounding performances that at once seem believably of their era and also achingly contemporary.