“Far From Heaven” is an expressionist historical document. It borders at times on parody and surreal cliché, but ultimately it paints 1950s New England in all its myriad detail.
It is easy, especially a generation or two removed, to see the ’50s in black and white, so to speak. “Far From Heaven” begins as an almost “Leave it to Beaver”-like send-up of the ’50s family, and an audience could easily be prepared for a simple, unnecessary demonstration of the dark realities underlying the artificiality of suburban happiness.
The demonstration we get is not simple.
The ’50s had another significant side: the contemporary reaction against the superficial TV reality of the era. Into its glossed facade, “Far From Heaven” fearlessly injects elements of ’50s-style counterculture.
Film noir, the height of abstract expressionism, and, most significantly, the growth of the civil-rights movement all impact the film on various levels. It is a study in the contrasts and conflicts that are harbingers of the era of change that was to follow.
Dennis Quaid (“The Rookie”) plays Frank Whitaker, an executive whose frequent absence from home has become conspicuous. At first, his excuse of a heavy workload seems to be a cover for his alcoholism. Then we find that his drinking is, in part, a response to his repressed homosexuality.
Quaid is convincingly tortured in what is really a supporting role. The film’s central figure is his wife, played with Oscar-worthiness by Julianne Moore (“Hannibal”).
Cathy Whitaker is the ideal ’50s housewife, engaged with various community activities while busily supporting her husband’s endeavors. Upon discovering her husband’s secret, she struggles to find a way to save her family.
But Frank’s attempts at “conversion,” via psychotherapy, are bound to fail. If the film revolved around this plotline, it would be a fine but limited statement, but there are more layers of prejudice to address.
The ’50s attitude toward homosexuality is contrasted with skillful subtlety with both the fake-smile repression of women and the more obvious racial discrimination of the time.
Dennis Haysbert (“Love & Basketball”) is inspiring as Raymond Deagan, the Whitakers’ new gardener. As the film’s most noble, likeable and sympathetic character, Haysbert deftly interprets the role of an educated black man in an insidiously segregated society.
Cathy’s growing friendship with Raymond is looked upon with horror by her peers. Her best friend Eleanor (Patricia Clarkson, “The Green Mile”) is the embodiment of two-faced concern. Unlike Cathy, she is fully indoctrinated to the prejudices of the day.
Likewise, Frank is unable to see himself in the mirror of discrimination. Cathy and Raymond are an appropriate minority: examples of how slowly minds change.
Moore is given the rare opportunity for a true leading female role, and she delivers a very real glimpse at what open-minded people endure in a closed-minded society. The foibles of her time dawn on her convincingly, as she is at the unhappy forefront of the struggle for equality.
Setting the film in Connecticut does more than give director Todd Haynes (“Velvet Goldmine”) a fine autumnal backdrop; it also allows him to show that, though less blatant than in Alabama or Mississippi, racism was rampant throughout the “liberal” North. He is thus able to display the gradations of prejudice and make an audience consider how far we still have to go.
Grade: A
