12/02/2002 Entry:
"All That Heaven Allows - Douglas Sirk (1955)
Far From Heaven - Todd Haynes (2002)"

Having read all the press regarding Todd Haynes' homage to Douglas Sirk, I made the special effort to see All That Heaven Allows before heading off to see Far From Heaven. This was a little difficult for me, I'm a huge Haynes fan, probably the only person I know to really enjoy Velvet Goldmine (although I admit it probably wouldn't hold up on a second viewing.) If there is anyone reading this who has yet to see Far From Heaven, and also hasn't seen any Sirk, I urge you to check Sirk out before seeing the Haynes. All That Heaven Allows and Written On The Wind are both out on DVD from Criterion.

I will state up front that I loved both of these films. Seeing Sirk for the first time is a real eye-opener. I'm not relly familiar with melodrama as a genre, and when I saw that first shot coming out of the trees I though maybe I was in for something really cornball. Thankfully, this turned out not to be the case. The first thing that catches your eye is the gorgeous photography. The vivid technicolor really jumps off the screen. Cinematographer Russell Metty worked with Sirk on two other films - Written On The Wind and Magnificent Obsession - as well as some other little films like Touch Of Evil, The Misfits and Spartacus. His use of color is lovely, in a couple of scenes Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson are seen bathed in a red or orange, while the rest of the set is a cool dark blue tone. The only warmth in these people's lives is with each other. The fact that this color is largely artifical simply heightens the point that Jane Wyman's life is pretty artificial. The use of color actually brought to mind the apartment interior scenes in Eyes Wide Shut, where Kubrick uses a similar pallette to set mood.

It is pretty amazing thinking back on it that Sirk manages to make something so melodramatic, without coming off as corny. You honestly feel for these people and their plight, and only in the last bit does it feel like maybe he's going a ittle bit over the top with Rock Hudson's accident. This holds even more true for a modern audience, since we've seen this story told a hundred times. That scene where the kids wheel in the TV is a real mother. I truly wanted to beat the crap out of those kids by the end of this.

The Criterion DVD of All That Heaven Allows is quite nice. The transfer is great, but it is light on the bonus features. The one that really stands out is an essay on Sirk by Rainier-Warner Fassbinder, which is truly entertaining and enlightening. It not only made me want to see more Sirk, but also to check out some Fassbinder (yet another in a long long list of directors I'm ashamed to have never seen anything by.) I considered renting Ali: Fear Eats The Soul to complete this series, but I didn't get to it.

Far From Heaven is wonderful as a homage to Sirk, taking the frame of Sirk's storytelling and building something more on top of it. While it contains several plot points from All That Heaven Allows, it's not really fair to call it a remake (any more than Soderbergh's Solaris can be called a remake of Tarkovsky's, but more on that in a later entry.) I read an interview with Haynes recently where he had to keep instructing his cinematographer and set designer to make things be less realistic. Everything needed to be more artificial from the top down, except the characters, who are bursting with real life. Again the use of color is key. Note how in one of the final scenes Dennis Quaid is in a room with his new lover, on the phone with Julianne Moore. Quaid's room is brightly lit with a warm orange-yellow, while Moore sits in a dark room with blue light streaming in the windows. Every aspect of the filmmaking craft in this film is a loving tribute to Sirk, from the opening shots through the trees to the final receding crane shot of Julianne Moore driving away from the train station. I wondered why Haynes didn't shoot the film in technicolor himself, which really woud have driven the point home, but apparently it was too expensive (see this semi-interesting indiewire interview with Haynes.) I had read a piece that mentioned that Elmer Bernstein, who did the score, had also worked with Sirk. However, IMDB is not backing this up. I would be really curious to hear the reaction of anyone who sees Far From Heaven but hasn't seen any Sirk. I can't imagine enjoying the film on the multiple levels that I did without that knowledge (small as it is,) although I think I stil would have liked it. The largely 20-something hipster crowd I saw it with seemed to enjoy the film, although who can say really.

Yet there is more going on here than a simple Sirk tribute too. Haynes turns the small-town scandal into two social issues (both inter-racial relationships and homosexuality.) Moore's character in this film is setup from the start to be a liberal who is already slightly out of step from her friends and neighbors. Where Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson can make a life together, the couple in Far From Heaven has no chance. No matter where they move, the problem will plague them. The addition of a violent outburst from Quaid, in which he swears, brings the movie right back to the present for a brief moment. It is a jarring scene, tearing the fabric of the film right down the middle before quietly gluing it back together again.

Moore does such a fantastic job here. When she blurts out, "Oh Raymond, call me Cathy." at the end I just about lost it. She made that one simple line convey all the meaning that the film had setup behind it. Actually, all of the performances are great, with the possible exception of the kids who seemed a little too plastic even for these surroundings. Haynes treats all his characters with respect and dignity, you never get the feeling he's laughing or poking fun the way you might with Solondz, but still its hard for a modern audience not to laugh when Julianne Moore tells her son to watch his language after the kid says "oh geeze." Thats really the only complaint I have for Far From Heaven though, which easily makes my top ten for the year and with so little time left, and Soderbergh's Solaris turning out to be a disappointment, it seems destined to stay there.

Replies: 17 comments

You aren't the only person to enjoy Velvet Goldmine. I, and three other people, think it's splendid. Glitter & glam, how could I not enjoy it. ;D Posted by Shannon @ 12/02/2002 10:24 AM CST

As a fan of glam rock, I enjoyed hearing all those tunes in a movie. Also, it was visually quite nice to look at. I do feel though that the whole thing would not hold up as well. I would elaborate, but its been a few years since I saw it as my memory is somewhat hazy. I do remember being somewhat taken aback at the time by the fact that they would kind of indirectly tie the characters to real people, then completely make up aspects of the character's life. I mean, when you put a guy on stage and have him sing "T.V. Eye" you are making a somewhat implicit statement that this person represents Iggy Pop. Then to take that person through a story that bears only the most vague resemblance of his own seemed a little weird. I should probably revisit this at some point, and I just went and added it to my netflix queue (although my netflix queue now has 370 movies, so who knows when I'll get to it.) Posted by gdd @ 12/02/2002 01:38 PM CST

Also, if i remember correctly, you only saw Citizen Kane for the first time recently. Re-watched Velvet Goldmine now and maybe you'll notice a new thing or two. Posted by skeeter meter @ 12/02/2002 03:28 PM CST

Well, define recently. I think it was about three years ago. Posted by gdd @ 12/02/2002 03:42 PM CST

370!?!?! that's crazy. and i thought the fact that i had 95 was sick. Posted by chris @ 12/02/2002 03:50 PM CST

Yeah, its pretty nuts. Basically my modus-operandi with netflix is to just add anything I'm even vaguely interested in. So like, one day I added all the Hitchcocks I hadn't seen. Then I just pick and choose as I send stuff back, and I have a really wide variety of stuff to choose from depending on what kind of mood I'm in. It is also useful for remembering movies you might otherwise have forgotten about, like I just noticed Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her in my queue. At one time I was interested in seeing thing movie, and now its there and I can revisit it someday if the urge strikes. I downloaded a local copy of my queue if you would like to view it: Netflix Queue. Note that I have actually seen a lot of the stuff in the queue, but I want to rent it for bonus features and whatnot. I always thought Netflix was missing out on a big feature by not allowing users to make their queues available for viewing by other users. It would be a great way to get ideas for what to view amongst your friends or others you find. Posted by gdd @ 12/02/2002 04:16 PM CST

Recently means really recently. But I guess I was mistaken. On 8/30/02 you mentioned you've only seen Kane on video, but I guess you also mentioned that you saw it "a couple of years ago." Sorry. Posted by skeeter meter @ 12/02/2002 04:40 PM CST

We have all those movies were I work. ;P Posted by shannon @ 12/02/2002 06:32 PM CST

*where. I can spell....really! Posted by shannon @ 12/02/2002 06:33 PM CST

Wow...looking at someone else's Netflix queue is very, very strange. Like briefly looking into an alternate reality. Hey, I didn't know "The 47 Ronin" was on DVD! And I have about 150 on my queue, so you're making us feel like slackers, Greg. Especially with the 5 disc option! Oh, weren't we supposed to be talking about "Far From Heaven"? :-) Short version: Loooove ATHA, liked FFH, thought FFH didn't feel *enough* like a Sirk movie, thought the "bifurcated" (if you will) plot of FFH hurt more than it helped, thought that by the end, it felt like any ol' period drama. But I did like it. Posted by Kent M. Beeson @ 12/03/2002 10:39 AM CST

I hooked up with the 5 disc option back when I was watching movies on the train a lot. I would be more than well serviced with the 3 disc option at this point, except I've gotten used to having the variety available. Not that this has anything to do with Far From Heaven either. I would be curious as to what ways you felt it wasn't enough like a Sirk movie (keeping in mind that All That Heaven Allows is the only one I've seen, making me woefully incompetent to comment on his career as a whole.) I mean, strictly from a technical angle, it felt immensely Sirksian. One thing my fiance pointed out is that the performances themselves are much more modern. The lines are delivered in a more natural fashion, the performances and dialog are less dramatized as is the style of the modern era. I mean, they are more dramatized than any normal modern film, but far less than in a film of the era. This is one of the ways that Haynes has melded modern and Sirksian filmmaking which I actually enjoyed (and which just made my fiance want to watch more Sirk films.) Posted by gdd @ 12/03/2002 05:39 PM CST

Kent, Haynes wasn't trying to make a purely Sirksian movie, so not loving it because it wasn't "*enough* like a Sirk movie" doesn't seem fair. Scenes/shots such as the theater lobby, the bar, etc. were inspired by other sources. Posted by skeeter meter @ 12/03/2002 10:03 PM CST

Oh, I understand that he wasn't trying to make a purely Sirkian (Sirksian? Sirkish? Sirkish Delight?) film--and I'll admit that, going in, I was probably hyp-mo-tized by all the critical hype and Sirk name-dropping (if you will). But...there was a wonderful, uncomfortable, odd feeling I got when the title card came up. Did you feel it too? It made me almost dizzy. I chuckled--who wouldn't?--but it was so...defiant. To me, it said, you're going to take this on my terms, like it or not. Unfortunately, that was the only time I felt like that during the movie. This is primarily what I meant by it not being Sirk enough (cue the Fabulous Thunderbirds)--that a "real" SimSirk would feel like an alien from outer space or a Lovecraftian thing from another world--it would have an otherworldly energy. Is that too much to ask? Hell yeah, way too much. But I can dream, can't I? The stupid thing is, I suspect there's a small, unavoidable technical reason for my response: all the exteriors were *real* exteriors, as opposed to studio constructions. I suspect that a lot of my reaction to Sirk films, what colors them, is that everything is artificial (I'm sure there are exceptions, but go with me here). Of course, this isn't Haynes' fault; he didn't have the budget for it. (If he did have the budget, would he have built sets? Does anyone know if he talked about this in interviews?) And then there's the story. It just...hmmm, not sure how to explain this. It's like in "Cheap, Fast, & Out of Control", where the lion tamer explains how the four ends of the chair distract and confuse the lion. I thought the two "poles" of the story (the two Dennises, if you will) distracted me from enjoying the story as *one thing*. Does that make sense? Probably not. Put another way, it was too clear that the double-story was a way to deconstruct (or whatever term) the typical melodrama/Sirk-style story, and it was difficult for me to get past that and enjoy it simply *as a story*. (And I'm sure some will object to me characterizing it as a double story, something like "it's not a double story, it's one story about Julianne Moore"; I guess, as a writer, I think that "my husband is gay" or "I'm having an interracial affair" is enough for one movie. YMMV.) With all that said (thanks for making me think, guys!), and having seen the movie, I bet that if'n'when I see it again, I'll like it even more. In fact, I suspect I'll need to bring the Kleenex. Posted by Kent M. Beeson @ 12/04/2002 11:17 AM CST

I think that shooting without Technicolor also hurts those shots from the perspective you're putting forth. With studio interiors you have a lot more lattitude to make up for it with lighting, whereas outdoors your hands are tied a lot more. If he had shot the outdoors stuff with Technicolor it probably would have had more of a "pop" than it does now (or this is my guess anyways.) Posted by gdd @ 12/04/2002 11:40 AM CST

Technicolor! Yes! I totally forgot about Technicolor. I think that definitely would've made a difference. It really pains me that these stupid technological/economical issues are part of what keeps me from embracing FFH, but at the same time, I can't deny my responses. Of course, now that I know what my hangups are, it might be easier the second time around. Hey, when can we expect an entry on "Solaris"? Can't wait to dig in! Posted by Kent M. Beeson @ 12/04/2002 12:01 PM CST

I want to finish the book first. I just started it today, but it seems like a quick read. Short answer: I loved Solaris 1 as a wonerful poetic piece which I look forward to some repeat viewings of. The ending was quite great. Solaris 2 seemed more plot heavy, and this bummed me out, although technically its a lovely piece of work. If I had not seen 1, I probably would have enjoyed 2 a lot more. Posted by gdd @ 12/04/2002 12:10 PM CST

You're reading the book? Cool! I will wait very patiently, then. Posted by Kent M. Beeson @ 12/04/2002 12:20 PM CST