Far from heaven

PLOT See Wiki for a more than adequate reveiw

REVIEW "Far from heaven" - why that title? Is life in Connecticut not as heavenly as the illusion states? I felt that Julianne Moore's acting was brilliantly stiff and I knew it was intentional only because I've seen her elsewhere actually acting. The whole tenet of this film is a director's wish to re-create a 50s style film in the 21st century. That explains why it's such an odd piece, in my opinion. It's rare to get any useful info from the extra features but this disc gave me the clue I was missing. I hadn't worked out the deliberate stiffness was just to fulfil the director's purpose. I originally thought something was wrong. Why?

Firstly a film that tries to make me enter an alien civilisation and time should not, I feel, serve up four major plot lines: homosexuality, homosexuality in marriage, the whole black question (and in Connecticut for goodness sake!) and finally the fragility of middle class values. Why are there no aliens from outer space???? Where's the focus? In Brief Encounter we concentrate on one topic and that's brilliantly handled, I feel tension, suspense, sympathy even empathy. In "Far from heaven" I want to know, at first, when is the 'black' thing going to flair up, when will they run away together? Then I think, hold on, Dennis Quaid is acting like a detective (note the trope of raincoat, fedora and angled shot when he is hanging on the corner about to enter the gay bar! Is that not 'Third Man'). But no, he's gay! Then ....oh look, she's carrying on life in shallowland and something other is going to happen to show up the cracks...ooops nope! It's all of those things (no aliens!)

Secondly I did notice the fifties look to the film, but because the culture is alien to me (and also to most American films) I was put off the deliberate labouring points such as the colours in her clothes, the lighting, and particularly the staging, which I realised was staged. Remember the Mary Tyler Moore Show? I love Lucy? etc etc they all had, at least in my memory, steps in the house. That meant the arriving actor (who usually got a cheer from the live audience) was above the other actors and entered in the play. In this film we get the moving camera and single shot but apparently to break it up, (in lieu of editing) the actors move around, up and down the steps etc.

Thirdly why, when she is obviously so gorgeous do we not see Julianne in one of those lovely Hollywood chiffon nightdresses? I suppose because this is a "50s" film and that didn't happen. (Later in the film I became aware of their double bed actually being 2 single beds pushed together - what?)

Lastly after hearing she is getting a divorce (and the Director "plasters" this scene heavily by showing the young boyfriend in the background so much so that I feel any repentant attitudeon the part of Quaid is not worthy of my sympathy), she rushes to the train station for the , yawn, dramatic (?) ending! But what is that ending? Will she carry on regardless, will she chase the black guy down, I really don't know and sadly by now I don't care, even if she decides to chase 50feet women from the Planet Zarg!!

Oh, and the Director's reference to "Written on the wind" is a bit ironic as Rock Hudson could have played the lead here too realistically. And it was interesting when looking for a picture to accompany this I found this one:


It's interesting that the later packaging (above) shows the two men looking at her and the former doesn't. The latter reflects better the film's intention in my opinion. The most used picture (at top of article) just says 'three people walking in a street'!

Did I like it? Maybe. I felt the artifice was filmically clever and interesting. It's hard to reproduce an entire filmic method out of time, but this certainly qualifies as a good example. And Julianne Moore is gorgeous! [Reviewed by Nuthatch]


I started off really enjoying this film. I thought the recreation of the Hollywood version of the 50s was beautiful and the 'perfect' nature of Cathy's life set her up nicely for it all to go wrong! However, as the film went on I found myself less and less convinced and engaged with the characters. At the beginning of the film it was convincing to see Cathy so staid and trying to hard to create the idyllic 50s middle class existence as that would be how she would have perceived her role, but her apparent lack of rage or frustration in all she goes through (her husband fails to cure his homosexuality, malicious gossip spreads about her relationship with her black gardener, and her world steadily falls apart) is unbelievable in the extreme. Perhaps if she were holding it all together for the kids or for herself then we might believe it, but after her husband has left the kids seem less important to the story and we see little of them until the last scene. We never really have the sense that she has a deep psychological need to hold all of it together for herself as she seems so detached from her society and her own feelings that you can't imagine her suddenly needing to regain the appearance of normality.

I had real problems with Cathy as a character. Julianne Moore brilliantly acted a housewife who had to keep conversation superficial and had to refrain from expressing her feelings in order to continue the appearance of a happy and successful home. However, Cathy never seems to move beyond this when all is not only changing around her but she is essentially changing society and its mores through her actions (albeit largely unsuccessfully). I was left largely unconvinced by Cathy's relationship with her black gardener. He was immensely charming, considerate, and a breath of fresh air into her normal life and this might have been enough to convince me in itself. However, we later find out that she has always supported the black civil rights movement and is very happy to sign up to the NAACP while running out the door on another errand. Where has she got these views from? She certainly hasn't got them from her society who whisper around her. Nor has she got them from her husband whose violent reaction against the gossip displays his feelings (yes, all very ironic, but also very truthful I think). Seeing as she seems to be devoid of intellectual thought and displays no other signs of being a 'rebel' I have to conclude that the film-makers felt the need to tack this all in so that she could be a more comfortable heroine for us as a contemporary audience.

There lies my greatest criticism of the film. The production team have taken great pains to create the idyllic 1950s as portrayed in Hollywood and have set up a fairly believable world (albeit one we recognise from films rather than real-life) and then feel the need to impose on it the views and morals of our times. Therefore it is no longer sufficient to have a lonely housewife falling in love with her black gardener because he is the one genuine and considerate person in her life. She has to fall in love with him because of these reasons but also has to display that she has never really seen colour anyway and supports the civil rights movement. Again, her reactions to her husband's sexuality start off as genuine (she asks him to see a doctor to be cured) but she never really seems to feel the disgust which you might expect from someone of that era (or from today as let's not pretend that people's feelings are now all neatly sown up on this issue) and she only seems to mildly feel the rejection which you would expect from this revelation. All of this put me in mind of The Hours, another film with Julianne Moore playing a woman in the 1950s and a film which left me totally unconvinced and one which received great acclaim (this time for its portrayal of lesbianism through the ages). With both films I remained unconvinced due to the painstaking recreation of the 'perfect 1950s' only seen in films and the introduction of a modern perspective on sensitive issues whether it be racism or sexuality. I am not suggesting that these issues are purely modern issues, I am stating that the treatment of them in these two films was from a purely modern perspective. I also suspect that the reason these films received acclaim was because we have an intrinsic need to impose our views onto the past to justify them in the present.

As I watched the film I was certainly aware of it as a construct - the outfits are too perfect (and on a number of occasions all colour co-ordinated) and people can't really have spoken on such a superficial level all the time except in the world of films. I saw from the extras on the DVD that it was deliberately designed to look like a construct and the colours and sets were specifically chosen to reinforce this and to heighten the emotions of the characters. The producers kept referring to the melodrama of Douglas Sirk and how they wanted to create a film like his, dealing with issues of morality in the time in which he directed. However, the level of artifice in the characters and the world in Far From Heaven detracted from the essentially modern nature of the views expressed, whereas Douglas Sirk was working with 1950s actors within the confines of 1950s techniques and conventions - for him it was essentially 'true', for us the style is essentially artificial.

If the aim of Far From Heaven was to put a modern story within the artificial world of the 1950s and watch how the puppet-like characters and constructs of 1950s film couldn't cope with the storyline because there was no forum for them to express themselves then it makes a convincing film. However, it is quite apparent that this is not the aim of the film - there are still too many attempts at reality and true feelings. For this to work for me they would have to have an even more heavily stylised world (similar to Tim Burton's take on 1950s America in Edward Scissorhands) so that I could seem the actors as mere puppets in the film-machine. As it is there are still too many pocket of reality for this to be the intention. There is the brilliant scene where Cathy and her husband talk (or don't really talk) when he returns home after she has caught him kissing a man in his office. There we see them struggling to say anything because it is all too difficult to admit to and say in the world which they have tried so hard to create for themselves. I found this very truthful and it is moments like this that are at odds with the artificial nature of other elements of the film.

All in all I quite enjoyed this film but I found myself so frustrated with its mix of themes and aims that I am unable to applaud it as anything other than a brave attempt at something which didn't quite come off. What that something is, I have yet to ascertain! [Reviewed by Stonechat]

I really enjoyed the film from a visual point of view, especially the vivid autumnal colours which were picked up in the clothing worn by Cathy and her women friends. There was a real sense of a picture-perfect world in which everybody was (superficially) healthy and happy and living harmoniously together. Cathy is the perfect wife of a successful man and mother of the obligatory two children (one boy and one girl, of course) and the film really captured the essence of the 1950's where respectability was so important. Cathy is so perfect that it is almost like she is playing a role in her own show, which at the end of the day is perhaps what most of the townspeople are doing, carefully maintaining the veneer of orderliness and respectability that covers the real rottenness and savagery of human nature underneath. I had a problem with the plot itself in that there seemed to be too many themes being explored at the same time, with the result that I felt none of them was explored in any real depth. The issue of relationships between the races was entangled with the issue of a married woman becoming intimate with any man apart from her husband and, on top of all this, there was the question of her husband's homosexuality. I could not help drawing an unfavourable comparison with 'Brief Encounter' where one of these issues is explored in greater depth and (in my opinion) with far greater success. I also found Cathy's ignorance of societal norms and opinions rather hard to believe. Having said all this, I think it was a sensitive exploration of the theme of 'forbidden love'. [Reviewed by Nighjar]

[Merlin was busy raiding on WoW]