, Imitation of Life
(2 films), Goodbye Again, Just
Like Heaven, Heaven Can Wait, Defending
Your Life
Title: Far from Heaven |
Release Date: 2002 |
Nationality and Language: |
Running time: 120 Minutes |
|
Distributor and Production Company: |
Director; Writer: Todd Haynes |
Producer: |
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert |
Technical: |
Relevance to doaskdotell site: W&M |
Review: First, this film should not be confused with the Italian Miramax release Heaven (2002, Miramax, dir. Tom Tywker, Italy/Germany) about a female terrorist who befriends and escapes “to heaven” literally in a balloon, this film featuring spectacular footage of the Italian countryside. Far from Heaven
presents a continuously bifurcated story of an upper-class couple in This period piece does create the mood of the early chapters of my own Do Ask, Do Tell book, except that the reality of homophobia and racism in those days tended to be more even more subtle than the opulent screenwriting of this film suggests. All that Heaven Allows (1955, Universal /
Criterion Collection, dir. Douglas Sirk, story by
Edna L. Lee, 89 min). A wealthy The Imitation of Life (1959, Universal, dir.
Douglas Sirk, novel by Fannie Hurst, 125 min) hits
hard on the melodramatic implications of a mixed African American child
resenting being born in a socially and legally inferior “class.” Right after
World War II, Annie Johnson (Juliana Moore) becomes a housekeeper for
ambitious actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) on Coney Island (home of the
“Seaside Courts”), and soon Annie’s
daughter Sarah Jane (Karen
Dicker) resents being treated as inferior by society just because of who her
mother is. She eventually colors her skin to pass as white, incurring the
inevitable existential family tensions: why should she be loyal to family
members who by definition would hold her back? At the same time, Lora’s
ambition is tested by ethical problems. Her boss and eventual boyfriend Steve
Archer (John Gavin, who looks a bit like Rock Hudson) wants her to “do
anything” to get a job, but she talks a screenwriter into changing a sexist
script that is offensive to women. The plot threads thicken over the years,
as by then Sarah Jane has been living as “white” and asking her mother to
have nothing to do with her, while Lora’s own daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) has
attraction to Archer. There is a spectacular sequence at the Moulin Rouge
that recalls the earlier 1952 French film. This doesn’t make
much of the potential love
triangle, inasmuch as Annie comes to a tragic end, leading to a spectacular
funeral procession that ends the film. The
earlier film (1934, Universal, dir. John M. Stahl, same novel) is on the
backside of the Netflix Goodbye Again (“Aimez-vous
Brahms”, 1961, United Artists, dir. Anatole Livak, novel by Francoise Sagan, 120 min, music by
Georges Auric and Johannes Brahms, France) is a
complicated love polygon between people of different ages with a lot of
social disapproval and heartache. The music from Brahms is used extensively,
especially the slow “minuet” from the 3rd Symphony, to give a sad
effect. I saw this in Just Like Heaven (2005, Dreamworks, dir. Mark Waters, PG-13, 102 min) is a
romantic comedy that tosses around issues about life after death and
commitment to life, seeming to follow in the heels of the Theresa Schiavo case. Landscape architect David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo) moves into a San Francisco Victorian apartment,
and finds it inhabited by the “ghost” or spirit of its former tenant, an
emergency room physician Dr. Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon). In time
we learn that she is actually in a coma after an auto accident, and her
spirit is floating free. A young sage Darryl at the local occult book store
(Jon Heder, from Napoleon Dynamite) may be pulling all the strings, it seems. (Jon
utters the last line of the script as he manipulates a fantasy bowl,
“righteous!”) Along the bump road there are ghostbusters and ectoplasm
sensors, before the movie turns more serious. Of course, David and Elizabeth
will eventually fall into a platonic love. You get to see Mark Ruffalo in the shower, with his hairy chest, and spread
out on the bed in one curious shot like a gigolo, but his face is loosing
harder edged than before. David pulls off his heroics, seeming to talk to
himself, as he saves a young man in a restaurant by slicing into his chest to
relieve a “pneumothorax” and then saves Heaven
Can Wait (1978, Defending
Your Life (1991, Warner Bros/Geffen, dir. Albert Brooks, 101 min, PG) is
another fantasy of what happens when you “die.” Here we have an ornate
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Related reviews: What Dreams May Come Written on the Wind (Sirk) |
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