For decades, we have seen filmmakers chasing the spectre of Douglas Sirk, whose melodramas like All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life defined their era and have stood the test of time, being as appreciated today as they were when they first emerged nearly seventy years ago. One director that has successfully managed to pay homage to Sirk that is natural and not at all forced is Todd Haynes, who crafts a beautiful and poetic tribute to the great director and his iconic style of melodrama in the form of Far from Heaven, widely considered one of his most important works and the one that perhaps indicated that he was not tethered exclusively to the independent film scene, but could mount a production that spoke to a lot of dominant ideas present in Hollywood at the time. In the film, Haynes crafts a story centred around a mild-mannered woman who tries to fashion herself as the perfect mother and wife, doing her best to maintain their home in 1950s Connecticut – but it soon becomes clear that there are cracks in this marriage, especially when she finds out that her husband is a closeted gay man, as well as her growing friendship with their African-American gardener, a companionship that stirs a lot of controversy in their small but vicious community. A film that has become representative of Haynes as both a writer and director (although he has only ventured back to the 1950s in one other film, over a decade later), Far from Heaven is popularly viewed as his best work, or at least the one that serves to be the best representation of both his social and artistic views, as well as an opportunity for him to evoke a very specific style. Over two decades later, it remains a profoundly moving film that provokes many complex conversations, each one pieced together with dedication and earnest attention to detail, and which continues to prove to be challenging in ways that we may not have anticipated based on a cursory glance.

Many directors have tried to create films that hearken back to a bygone era. Period pieces tend to have a generally poor reputation overall, but there are examples of those that have managed to avoid criticism solely because of the level of work put into specific ideas, both narratively and visually. The key is not to spend too much time hammering in the visual details, but rather allowing them to flourish as naturally as they can. One of the first elements about Far from Heaven that strikes us is the level of detail Haynes brings to the production – he’s genuinely not trying to evoke the 1950s so much as he is attempting to make a film that would fit in with the melodramas that inspired this film. There is a distinctive lack of star-gazing sentimentality in how the director approaches his inspirations – he is certainly enamoured with Sirk enough to craft a pastiche, but there is a lot more to this film than simply paying homage. To achieve the distinctive look and atmosphere, Haynes employs a wide range of professionals in every department, with whom he works closely to create this compelling voyage back in time. The production design and costuming teams work laboriously to evoke the period through the aesthetic choices, which are captured in vivid detail by veteran cinematographer Edward Lachmann. Elmer Bernstein is enlisted to compose the score, and considering he was a working musician at the same time that Sirk was making films, he had first-hand experience that was not simply an attempt to evoke the past but rather recreate it to the best of his recollection. The result is a layered, beautiful film that looks exceptionally similar to the kinds of films being honoured, especially in small details like rear-projection driving scenes and the use of period-appropriate colours, with every small element making a profound difference in the development of this engaging and complex period drama.

While she worked with several impressive directors early in her career, there are two filmmakers who we can primarily attribute to the rise of Julianne Moore, who is undeniably one of the greatest living American actors. Without Robert Altman or Haynes, she would not have been cast in some of the most challenging and complex films of her career and would have likely lost the opportunity to learn the skills that became fundamental to her acting repertoire. Far from Heaven is a reunion for Moore and Haynes after their career-defining work in [safe], and the debate around her greatest performance usually comes down to these two films. My personal preference has always been towards the present film – there is something so intriguing about how Moore takes the character of Cathy Whitaker and develops her into such a fascinating figure, being able to play various facets of the character, whether she is the loyal, dutiful housewife who throws herself at the feet of her husband and does her best to fit in with the high society that she has desperately tried to maintain, or in the moments of quiet rebellion. Moore has a knack for both non-verbal and spoken acting, and her skills have always allowed her to convey a range of emotions without needing to resort to excess unless it was necessary. Her work in Far from Heaven is superlative and brilliant – she is subtle but complex, and every moment she is on screen is extraordinary. She is joined by a tremendous cast, which includes Dennis Quaid (in his personal best performance) as her husband questioning his sexuality, Dennis Haysbert as the man she befriends much to the chagrin of her community, and the always-reliable Patricia Clarkson and Viola Davis, who may not have the most substantial parts, but are present for some of the most emotional and complex moments of the film. Haynes has always had a terrific ability to bring out the best in his actors, and Far from Heaven contains some of the best ensemble work of his storied career. 

A film like Far from Heaven is the perfect opportunity to once again quote David Lynch’s sentiment “I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.”, which is perhaps the most succinct description of the American Dream and the broken promises of the white-picket-fence from which the ideal version of society has been built for the past century. While he may be stylistically and conceptually quite different from the acclaimed surrealist, Haynes shares a similar sentiment throughout his work, which comes through in the fact that he has always shown a profound fascination with suburbia – going back to films like Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story and [safe], he has been intent on looking at the idea of this seemingly perfect life, and how it is anything but ideal when you look beneath the surface. Not having firsthand knowledge of the 1950s, but rather having lived it through the films he consumed over the years, Haynes was intent on crafting a film that tackles common ideas that existed at the time. Two major concepts that were prominent in the culture during that decade (as well as those that surrounded it, not being exclusive to this era, but rather factoring quite heavily a lot into the culture of the time) were race and sexuality – America was undergoing a slow, quiet period of civil rights, going back to the early days of the century but growing more steady around this time, with the post-war period proving to be a watershed moment for liberal causes. Far from Heaven uses both as the foundation for its story, looking at how the character of Cathy Whittaker handles being someone who holds more progressive views on principle but struggles to find a direction forward when these issues seep into her domestic situation. The concept of the “not in our neighbourhood” line of thinking, whereby people were liberal and more than willing to support progressive causes as long as it didn’t happen next door to them, plays a major role in this film, and Haynes beautifully explores these ideas throughout the film, crafting a fluid and complex narrative that addresses them without becoming overwrought or heavy-handed.

However, we find that Far from Heaven is not just an attempt to preach about progressive causes and how the Civil Rights and gay liberation movements that were simmering around this time were perceived. These elements factor quite heavily into the story, but we find that the film is far more concerned with being something far more simple, and perhaps even more effective. The story revolves around Cathy and how she attempts to find a place in a society that she should technically be more than comfortable in, but steadily starts to feel like she is a fish out of water, a pariah in a community that seems to accept her until she begins to show signs of not being entirely adherent to the party line. Far from Heaven is designed to be a complex character study that serves to be a methodical dissection of the quintessential American housewive, revealing the layers beneath an archetype that existed for generations, but has never truly been understood, mostly since what Cathy represents is the kind of repressed woman who is proposed as being ideal precisely because not only does she lack agency, but firmly accepts it – and when this suddenly changes, she begins to see a shift in how the people whose respect she has yearned to earn for years begin to erode. The film does exceptionally well in navigating tricky narrative territory – it doesn’t celebrate the kind of stiff, lifeless housewife persona that was dominant, but it also refuses to vilify it in the way that works like The Stepford Wives and just about any suburban satire tended to attack these people who occupied a position that was forced on them – and in the process, it grows into an engaging and complex study on femininity at a time when being a woman was quite different, focusing specifically on someone who grows to see the flaws within a social system that was inaccurately sold as the ideal way of life, but which proved to be far too stifling and limiting for anyone who sought any degree of agency or independence. The fact that Far from Heaven is set in the 1950s, but speaks to something that is still a contemporary issue, is incredibly poignant and quite troubling since we see that many of the factors that divide the community in this film (including how homosexuality and race are viewed) persist to this day, only in a slightly different and perhaps even more covertly sinister manner.

Far from Heaven is understandably considered one of the best films of the 2000s, particularly because of how it subverts and redefines genre and narrative in fascinating ways. It is easy to view it as yet another 1950s pastiche about how secretly corrupt and malicious the American Dream is, and how those beautiful green lawns and white picket fences were protection against the sordid activities that happened within these beautiful, idyllic homes. This is the foundation of the film, but it’s not the only defining factor. Instead, Haynes uses this as the starting point for an engaging and compelling narrative with a lot of endearing detail, which paints a portrait of not only a particular era but also the people that existed within it. Cathy Whitaker is an ordinary woman, and we only witness a short fragment of her life, nothing that came afterwards is likely particularly notable or compelling – but yet, the film delivers so much extraordinary detail in how it develops her character as an embodiment of the women that yearned to be unshackled from the confines of suburban life, but who could never hope to gain agency without falling out of favour with the people responsible for establishing what was socially acceptable at the time. In many ways, Far from Heaven is a film that is as much about contemporary life as it is about the 1950s, with many of these same themes resonating with contemporary viewers. It’s a poetic and detailed character study that bears a lot of relevance to everyday life, and which speaks to modern ideas in more ways than we would expect. Complex and beautiful, anchored by a striking performance by Moore and the rest of the cast, and compiled by one of the great directors of his generation, Far from Heaven is as brilliant today as it was two decades ago, and it remains the gold standard for period dramas that strive to be much more than simply visually striking journeys to the past, and instead try to find a common relationship between the past and present, proving how style may change, but perceptions often remain the same.