FilmBlather.com

Far from Heaven is a film in the style of 1950's Douglas Sirk melodramas; more specifically, it is a loose remake of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. Interestingly, Todd Haynes' movie is neither parody nor homage, but rather a painstaking recreation. As film critic David Sterritt opined in his introduction of the screening, it is an experiment to see whether the style can still speak to today's audience. The film, jarring and off-putting to many of the people around me, is a peculiarly emotional work, restrained in style but unabashed in feeling. I can certainly see why some have hated it; I think it works beautifully.

The setting is the days of I Love Lucy and The Donna Reed Show, a time when children are best seen and not heard, when upper middle-class housewives are busy planning socials and parties while their husbands are at work earning the family's keep, their arrival home invariably heralded by shouts of "Hey, Pop!" and "Hi, dear." Cathy and Frank Whitaker (Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid), collectively known as "Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech, have exactly such a household; Frank is a successful sales executive and Cathy is the best socialite in town, renowned for her great parties -- and, as the social column of their local rag notes, for her "kindness to Negroes."

The Whitaker's "Pleasantville" universe is shattered when Cathy, taking dinner to her stuck-at-work husband, discovers him in his office passionately kissing another man. If that sounds like a devastating revelation now, imagine it in the 1950's, when a gay man is referred to as "one of those" and the word "homosexual" is avoided at all costs. I expected the wife to follow the discovery with a screaming fit, followed by an angry storm out the door, but no: Cathy is an eminently kind, understanding woman, just like a housewife should be, and she stands behind her husband, keeping his secret and encouraging him to take therapy. Frank, for his part, vows to "beat this thing" and begins in-depth conversion treatment, but both of their frustration grows when nothing seems to work.

Meanwhile, Cathy befriends Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), her black gardener dealing with the recent passing of his father and the not-so-recent death of his wife, with whom he had a daughter. Their friendship is a dangerous proposition, threatening to turn the already frazzled Cathy into a complete outsider. After a while. it seems that only her best friend Eleonor is still standing by her.

Much of Far from Heaven is grandiose and exaggerated: witness the scenes in which all of the other mothers grab their children and literally scutter away from Cathy when they find out that she's befriended a "Negro." That the film nevertheless rings true is a testament to Haynes' script, which dutifully goes through the "Father Knows Best" archetypes but remains emotionally believable. This is undeniably an "issues" movie, interested in commenting on big topics like homosexuality and race, but it doesn't preach and takes the time to involve us in its story.

It also rivals Road to Perdition as one of the year's most startlingly beautiful films. Whereas the Mendes work was all browns and dark greens, Far from Heaven is reds, and golds, and purples. Every shot is a painting, every scene a meticulous composition; I lost myself in the gorgeous, pitch-perfect vistas that Haynes somehow gets to the screen. It is all in service of creating the kind of idyllic but foreboding world that the aforementioned Pleasantville had to mute in black and white, and as it comes crashing down around Cathy, the irony of its superficial beauty hits us.

Moore and Quaid are amazing in roles that ask for our sympathy even as the characters do things that we would condemn as idiotic in anything but a 50's melodrama. And even though I accepted its intentions from frame one, Far From Heaven remains an occasionally difficult pill to swallow. It will likely become a legendarily polarizing experience, what with its slow pace and elaborate artifice, but I found its core powerfully simple. This kind of project often becomes merely a film school exercise; Far From Heaven is much more.