|
This is movie heaven
Far From Heaven opens to rave reviews
|
Arthur J Pais
The Oscar buzz was so strong for Far From Heaven at the Toronto International Film Festival that no movie critic wanted to miss it. The lush, solidly performed, tough but pulse-quickening melodrama is the quirky little movie to beat for Oscar nominations this year.
In Toronto, several influential critics such as Roger Ebert could not get into the screening room due to the overwhelming demand for the film. Their angry protests led to an additional screening.
The excitement over the film is certainly justified. While it may not turn out to be a huge commercial success, it is bound to have a decent run, with a healthy $20 million gross in sight, and a big future in video and DVD.
A sort of tribute to the Hollywood soap operas of director Douglas Sirk made in the 1950s, writer-director Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven is being hailed as one of the most original films seen in a long time. It is a study of an era that is long gone and yet it is very contemporary. It deals with the limits of tolerance, hypocrisy, friendship, loyalty and self-delusion. The hypocrisy and contradiction of one era --- in the movie, the Eisenhower era of the 1950s --- are slowly and deftly unraveled by Haynes. Some of us cannot but help think of the double standards and contradictions in our own lives today.
Calling it 'perhaps the year's most daring and fully realised movie,' Lou Lumenick gave the film four stars (out of four) in The New York Post.
While Haynes pays 'elaborate homage to Sirk', Lumenick wrote, the movie also questions the premise that the Eisenhower era was one of tranquility and prosperity. 'What Haynes is asking, rather subversively, is whether things have changed all that much in half a century for gays, blacks and, particularly, women.'
In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers posed an interesting question: 'Why bother with a movie about a girly-swirly Connecticut housewife, circa 1957?'
The film has won praise not only from the big timers such as The New York Times and Los Angeles Times but also from small city and small town newspapers across America.
Giving the film the ultimate four stars, Travers answered his own question. 'Because Far From Heaven is a classic of its kind. Because Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid give the performances of their careers,' he wrote. 'And because writer-director Todd Haynes, the indie rebel who guided Moore through the stunning 1995 AIDS parable Safe, raises the chick flick to the level of art. I should mention that Far From Heaven is also riveting, rapturous fun. Talk about movie heaven -- this is it.'
The popular showbiz magazine Entertainment Weekly was equally enthusiastic. 'From its lovely, too-pristine-to-be-real opening image, a slow, arcing crane shot of a train station viewed under autumn leaves, through its tumultuous tale of a Hartford, Conn, couple whose lives are ripped apart by desires they can scarcely acknowledge,' wrote Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly, 'the entire movie is a picture-perfect, nearly fetishistic re-creation of the four-hankie, Technicolor melodramatic style that Sirk made famous in such popular weepers as All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life and Written on the Wind.'
Giving the film an A grade, Gleiberman noted: 'It may have taken a mad film buff to dream this movie up, let alone to bring it off, but only a true artist could have suffused it with such searching purity of emotion. Haynes hasn't just embraced old Hollywood. He has brought its soul back to life, showing us a path to what Hollywood could still be.'
The movie revolves around Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) who seems to have a perfect life, with two children and a hard-working husband, Frank (Dennis Quaid), a top executive at a TV sales company named Magnatech. Cathy and Frank are known locally as 'Mr and Mrs Magnatech'. A newspaper column notes how kind she is to her African American maid and how she has Jewish friends.
But when Cathy catches Frank kissing another man in a diner, her values and tranquility are sorely tested. Even as Frank enters therapy, Cathy is not the same person she used to be. The doctor warns them the therapy may even push him into acknowledging that he is truly gay. As Frank turns to alcohol for solace, Cathy is drawn to Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), her smart African American gardener. Soon the town comes to know of the interracial romance and Frank's fight to acknowledge his homosexuality. Despite her passions and her liberal views, Cathy realises that her love for Raymond cannot succeed because of societal pressure.
A handsome movie, it is a triumph on many levels. It is one of those rare movies that you will want to see again and again, discovering in the process the touches of one of the most gifted filmmakers today.