This uniquely beautiful film--from one of the smartest and most idiosyncratic of contemporary directors, Todd Haynes (Safe, Velvet Goldmine)--takes the lush 1950s visual style of so-called women's pictures (particularly those of Douglas Sirk, director of Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession) to tell a story that mixes both sexual and racial prejudice. Julianne Moore, an amazing fusion of vulnerability and will power, plays a housewife whose husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret gay life. When she finds solace in the company of a black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), rumors and peer pressure destroy any chance she has at happiness. It's astonishing how a movie with such a stylized veneer can be so emotionally compelling; the cast and filmmakers have such an impeccable command of the look and feel of the genre that every moment is simultaneously artificial and deeply felt. Far from Heaven is ingenious and completely engrossing. --Bret Fetzer
(25 votes)
2.
4 Academy Award nominations
Julianne Moore (Hannibal, Boogie Nights) and Dennis Quaid (The Rookie, Frequency) star in this seductive story of a seemingly perfect family, and the forbidden desires that threaten to tear them apart.
Cathy Whitaker (Moore) has it all-a lovely home, two wonderful children and a handsome husband (Quaid), who is successfully climbing the corporate ladder. But Cathy's idyllic existence is just an illusion, and she is eventually forced to choose between living a lie or following her heart.
Academy Award nominee Moore "is a vision," declared Rex Reed, and he called Quaid's performance "the best of his career," in this stunning drama hailed by the New York Post as "one of the year's best.'
(25 votes)
3.
The model marriage of Frank (Dennis Quaid) and Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) in 1950s Hartford is depicted in television ads, and a magazine features photographs of Cathy as a model homemaker and citizen. Yet, behind the curtains of their dream home, Cathy and Frank hide scandalous secrets. Frank has been masquerading his homosexuality and is seeing a doctor for a heterosexual conversion. Meanwhile, Cathy finds solace in her gardener, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), a black man about whom Cathy must conceal her growing feelings, since simply being seen with him is cause for scandal.
Filmmaker Douglas Sirk employed the trappings of the melodrama to satirize and criticize narrow minds in the 1950s status quo with films such as ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. Todd Haynes (SAFE) uses Sirk's highly stylized universe to critique society half a century later in FAR FROM HEAVEN. The film uses thematic elements of Sirk's such as isolating characters through windows and vivid, symbolic colors and flowers. It also applies Sirkian plot devices such as gossiping neighbors and demonizing television. Attacking prejudice, Haynes' methods are particularly effective as he uses an antiquated style of filmmaking to shed light on societal problems that are pervasive even in the 21st Century.
(23 votes)
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