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Far From Heaven
directed by Todd Haynes
starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert
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Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven is both an incredible film and a minor disappointment. It's a meticulous re-creation of the sensibility, style, and politics of the great 1950s films of Douglas Sirk­ All that Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind. As homage it is word- and picture-perfect. But Haynes's re-creation somehow lacks the power and emotional drive that made Sirk's films so resonant.

As written and directed by Haynes, Far From Heaven is essentially a remake of Sirk's 1955 All that Heaven Allows (remade previously by Fassbinder in 1974 as Fear Eats the Soul.) In that earlier film, Jane Wyman plays a youngish, upper-middle-class suburban widow who falls in love with a working-class gardener, played by Rock Hudson. Her children and neighbors shun the relationship, and Wyman leaves her love only to realize that emotional and sexual happiness is far more important than respectability.

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Haynes has re-visioned this story, and, while maintaining place and time, has updated it to keep its scandouslessness fresh. Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) seems to have the perfect life­ a husband Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid), a highly-paid advertising executive; two flawless children; a gracious home in Hartford, Connecticut; and a wardrobe that's as ghastly perfect an example of 1950s couture as can be imagined. But as we all know, nothing in the 1950s was what it seems: Cathy's husband is struggling (not very successfully) in repressing his homosexual desires, her alienation and loneliness is becoming more and more crushing, and she seems to be falling in love with Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), her black gardener.

As in Sirk's original, nothing very much happens here­ Frank comes out and leaves the marriage, Cathy causes a scandal by being seen socially with Raymond, and Raymond leaves town for his own protection as well as Cathy's. It's about as Far From Heaven as you could get.

Haynes has, of course, raised the ante here. Sirk was happy to allow white heterosexual Jane Wyman to finally bed down with white heterosexual (in the film) Rock Hudson, and note that this may be all that heaven would allow. But Haynes­ with a sharper sense of social prejudice and irony­ cannot allow Cathy a fulfilled romance. Many critics say that the unique aspect of the film is Haynes's introduction of homosexuality (surely a nod to the omnipresence of Hudson's queerness in Sirk's original). But the reality is that Haynes grasps that the race taboo in the 1950s was far greater than the queer taboo. Husband Frank gets his boyfriend, while wife Cathy is the one to suffer.

Since the beginning of his career­ with the stunning Karen Carpenter Story (the singer's life as told by Barbie Dolls) through films such as Poison and The Velvet Goldmine­ Haynes has managed to wed the artifice of high camp to the dramatic. Even as the silly Barbie Dolls mouthed voice-over dialogue, the story itself shocked and moved. In Poison he managed to find real emotional depth in the usually dismissible genres of the horror film and the pseudo-documentary. Even The Velvet Goldmine­ which is a dramatic and thematic mess­ packed a wallop as Haynes used the clothing styles of the 1960s to convey the moods and emotional states of his characters and their culture. And this is true of Far From Heaven as well­ the clothes, rooms, outdoor settings, even the food, resonates the glamour, repression, hurt, and extravagance of the 50s. It is, visually, the most perfect film in years.

Maybe too perfect. As a homage to Sirk, it couldn't be more on-target: the camera-work, the music by Elmer Bernstein, the performances all bring us back to the original in a way that's both respectful and a graceful step removed. Haynes is careful to acknowledge Sirk, but able to establish himself as his own artist. Yet there's nothing to knock us out of our seats, as Sirk does with the scene of Jane Wyman looking into the television set in All that Heaven Allows. Haynes seems to be stinting on our emotional responses. Maybe he was afraid of being accused of going too far, or of playing his cards too freely. The shame is that Sirk­ never one to hold back­ could always get a powerful response from his viewers simply by trusting them to "get" the overwrought plot outlines and the high-blown theatrics of his films. Haynes knows how to make films that get us to respond­ there are scenes in Poison that are unbearably painful. Far From Heaven is a great film, but it would have been greater if Todd Haynes had been able to really do a homage to Sirk and knock us out of our seats.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com