Review of Far from Heaven (2002) by Eric R — 12 Aug 2011

Far From Heaven is a homage film to all the melodramas from the 50s and the Douglas Sirk movies like All that Heaven Allows, which tells about a housewife, whose life that she thought was perfect until she sees through that illusion that is her dream house to discover the truth.

Julianne Moore does a wonderful job as Cathy Whitaker, when her life starts to disintegrate as she finds out the dark secret about his husband played by Dennis Quaid.

He was stunning as Cathy's tortured husband and seeing how he deals with his situation of being attracted to men, he just pours his heart out about how ashamed he is. The two main actors have this balance of warm and cold feelings between them. The gay aspect of Frank Whitaker came from actor Rock Hudson's personal love life with his agent, back in the 50s. With the substance that's given to Quaid's character, I would say this is his best performance of his career.

The friendship between Cathy and Raymond Deagan was tentative at first and it turns to affective tenderness. Deagan is the kind-hearted man who always tries to look at the postive side of life and Cathy wished that she would be part of that forever.

Directed by Todd Haynes, who directed films like I'm Not Here and Safe. He allows the actors to be very real in their roles. The dialogue they say may be corny, but he wants to interpret the style of how they spoke in those 50s movies, rather than research on the 50s itself. But at the same time, Haynes wants to show how much the human soul can handle from a arbitrary civilization and indifference morals from that time. The lighting in this film is used quite well for tone, with a different color executed; for example the green lighting represents something mysterious and forbidden, or when the scene is bathed with artificial sunlight, what's going on is probably too good to be true.

Far From Heaven is a visually amazing film to watch for those of you that like homage films, excellent performances accompanied by excellent production value and thought-provoking conflicts.