Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The dark side of Father Knows Best, 28 Feb 2006
If you've been around long enough to remember those 50s shows like "Father Knows Best", you'll remember how perfect life for the American WASP middle class was depicted as being. Perfect father, mother, marriage, children (or at least reasonably well behaved), job (for Dad - Mom stayed home), house, schools, and neighborhood. If there was a dark side, it didn't extend further than one of the Anderson kids complaining about having to help set the perfect table for the perfect home-cooked dinner. America had single-handedly won WWII (what Eastern Front?) and was keeping the world safe for democracy. Ike was President, and life was grand. For those of us who lived even a close approximation, it was.FAR FROM HEAVEN begins just that way. Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid) and his All-American blonde wife Cathy (Julianne Moore) - the high school cheerleader/prom queen sort who probably married right after graduation - own a perfect (and huge) home in a perfect neighborhood of Hartford, CN where you can't see the perfect neighbors for all the trees (gloriously clothed in perfect fall colors). The Whitakers have two perfect kids, and Frank manages the local office of mighty Magnatech. It's 1957, and when the Whitaker boy says "Oh, gee!", Mom reprimands him for his bad language. Frank wears a suit, tie and hat; Cathy wears full skirts and is perfectly coifed. In this all-white world, the only Blacks are the perfect housekeeper Sybil (Viola Davis) and the perfect gardener Ray (Dennis Haysbert). But there's a flip side. In the film's leading role, Moore turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as the 50s-perfect wife whose perfect life implodes on the day she discovers hubby, ostensibly working late, in his office passionately kissing another man. And she's so pathetically grateful when Frank reluctantly consents to undergo psychiatric treatment. But then, in her growing loneliness, she befriends Ray, who's just taken over his deceased father's yard maintenance business. Ray is educated, sensitive, soft-spoken, gentle, and the single father of a young daughter. One day, Cathy accepts Ray's offer to take her on a short errand out of town to pick up some shrubs. On the way back, they stop for lunch at a roadhouse. Cathy is seen exiting Ray's truck by a local gossip, who soon pours gasoline on the smoldering racism of the Whitakers' neighbors. Even Cathy's best friend Eleanor (Patricia Clarkson) is appalled. Finally, thinking all is at least approaching right again with Frank (who's undergoing that therapy, remember?), off Cathy and her troubled spouse go for an idyllic winter vacation in Miami, a place peopled with handsome young men. Oh oh, big mistake. In a role very different from the congenial characters recently played in FREQUENCY and THE ROOKIE, Quaid is darkly effective as the tortured Frank. And Haysbert is perhaps another Denzel Washington in the making. The "look" of the film is superb, recreating the fashion, cars, home and office decor, and technology of the period to an uncanny degree. FAR FROM HEAVEN gives the viewers a glimpse at the dark side of an ideal time perhaps existing only in nostalgia and Norman Rockwell prints. It presages the turmoil and changes in a society on the verge of irrevocable evolution. For American audiences, this deserves to be a great film. For foreign audiences who didn't share in America's 50s bounty, it may be something less, but at least they can see where we come from.
|
|
|
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
i looked beneath the surface and it was PERFECT..., 21 Jun 2004
I think this movie is the best movie to come out of hollywood in years. I really identified with Dennis Quaids character and felt equally sorry for his wife played with genius by Julliane Moore. The ending was very moving and I felt sad that many of the issues dealt with in the movie are still problems with some people today. I was also impressed with the use of colour in the movie and was suprised to discover that no digital tweaking or colour enhancment was used on the film. Overall i think the picture should have won more at the acadamy awards, its not often that this much care and attention goes into a movie aimed at the masses. Simply Wonderful.
|
|
|
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This film oozes..., 27 Aug 2003
By A Customer
Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven," the best film of the year, is the kind of movie lover's dream that requires more suspension of disbelief than your usual fantasy or musical. It demands a willingness of the viewer to be transported back to a time when movies were shot on studio back lots and came with a lush artificiality and a distinct archness.
Like "8 Women," the current FranÁois Ozon French romp, "Far From Heaven" gets its inspiration from the florid melodramas that director Douglas Sirk made in collaboration with producer Ross Hunter at Universal, working within the 1950s studio system. However, whereas Ozon has fun, merely flirting with signature Sirk ingredients, Haynes is serious and goes further. He re-creates Sirk's soapy tableaux with such a single-minded, virtuosic flair that his bid for perfection becomes an unconstrained fetish.
The result is a film that works as a tribute to a specific bygone film genre and style, but also to the era itself -- the 1950s in all its repressed, hypocritical glory. "Far From Heaven" doesn't merely play like a '50s-style movie. It is a '50s movie. Except for a couple of taboo issues that Haynes has moved from the background into the forefront, he's created a film that looks and feels as if it was made in 1957, the year in which his story is set.
The old-style opening credits immediately signal that we are in Eisenhower's America, where the notion of "normalcy" is a lie that shrouds the real desires and needs of people. Sirk's camera would trail behind his glamourous leading ladies (usually Jane Wyman, Lana Turner or Dorothy Malone) and peer through the openings of the curtains that concealed the secrets within their perfectly attired suburban homes.
Haynes does the same, but he opens those drapes little by little to expose the hidden truths.
Julianne Moore (made up here to look like Malone) is Cathy, a housewife and society matron who lives in the fashionable section of Hartford, Conn. At first, we have a tendency to peg Cathy. In order of importance, she has it all -- social standing, a knockout wardrobe, a splendid Colonial home with all the modern conveniences (and a maid), two beautiful children and a handsome husband with a good career.
Dennis Quaid, continuing an amazing comeback, is Frank Whitaker, Cathy's husband and top sales executive at something called Magnatech. At weekly cocktail parties, Cathy and Frank are toasted as "Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech."
Yes, it's easy to judge Cathy by her acquisitiveness, but, as we quickly learn, she's a really nice woman with a streak of decency that will prove to be her undoing. Trouble starts to brew on the day Cathy greets her new gardener -- Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert) -- who has taken over for his late father. A reporter is in Cathy's living room, there to do a society column on her and Frank, and the woman happens to see Cathy touch the shoulder of Raymond -- who is "colored" -- as Cathy consoles him.
When the column appears, describing Cathy as "a woman as devoted to her family as she is kind to Negroes," the good (white) people of Hartford are aghast, even Cathy's best friend, the otherwise liberal-minded Eleanor Fine (Patricia Clarkson in a wonderfully wicked turn). Meanwhile, Frank starts acting peculiar, following other men into dark alleys, movie theaters and bars. On one occasion, Cathy has to bail him out of jail following a vague, drunken "indiscretion." "All because of one lousy drink," Frank complains.
She has no idea what's going on. Why, Cathy's offended when their son, Davey, uses expressions like "jeez" and "jiminy." But, late one night, she discovers the truth. Frank calls home and says he has to work late. So Cathy decides to surprise him by taking his supper into the office -- where she catches Frank passionately kissing another man. She insists that he see a doctor. Frank agrees and goes into "aversion therapy" and, although no "cure" is promised, he beams, "I'm going to beat this thing," as if he's talking about his drinking problem.
While this may read like a parody, "Far From Heaven" never plays that way. Frank's self-loathing, for example, becomes more evident, with Frank saying, "I know this is a sickness because I feel despicable." No, the film is played straight, and we are immediately absorbed by the societal restrictions of the time.
As Frank continues his dalliances with his new lover and gets ugly at home, Cathy endures her pain and falls into the arms of Raymond. Eleanor, who can halfway accept Frank's homosexuality, can't tolerate Cathy's relationship with Raymond. Soon there is gossip and, in a scene that underlines the hypocrisy of the times, Frank finds out about Cathy and Raymond and yells at his wife about how she is ruining the reputation of the family.
"Far From Heaven" is a triumph of style, from its sets to its acting. Haynes gives his film an aura reminiscent of waxed fruit, one of the era's more curious household acoutrements. And his cast members all look as if they are posing for an old Life magazine spread, with both Moore and Quaid giving their best performances to date (and, in Quaid's case, his bravest) as their characters speak in '50s-style code.
The film oozes craft. If there's any justice in Hollywood (and, unfortunately, there usually isn't), "Far From Heaven" should sweep this year's Oscars come March 23, with statuettes going to Haynes (for both his direction and his script) and the film itself, along with Moore (best actress), Quaid (best actor), Clarkson (supporting actress), Haysbert (supporting actor), Edward Lachman (cinematography), James Lyons (editing), Mark Friedberg (production design), Sandy Powell (costumes) and the great Elmer Bernstein, who has written the quintessential Elmer Bernstein score for this utterly flawless movie -- again, the year's best.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
![Far From Heaven [DVD] [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514XNM065DL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![The Hours [DVD] [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YE0QP5ETL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![Savage Grace [DVD] [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XimdpYb7L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![I Can't Think Straight [DVD] [2008]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iBm4tnErL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
See all Reviews
![The Hours [DVD] [2003]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YE0QP5ETL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Meryl Streep
![Safe [1996] [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51A06A20P1L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Julianne Moore
![Directed By Douglas Sirk - Has Anyone Seen My Gal?/All I Desire/Magnificent Obsession/All That Heaven Allows/Written On The Wind/The Tarnished Angels/Imitation Of Life [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AT82K6NWL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Jane Wyman
![Savage Grace [DVD] [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XimdpYb7L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Julianne Moore
![The Diving Bell And The Butterfly [DVD] [2007]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N1cYwWruL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Mathieu Amalric
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Make sure you always get what you want with an Amazon.co.uk 
Amazon Home