The 1950s in
America was a very interesting decade culturally speaking. Right after World
War II and right before the racial, sexual, and rock’n’roll revolutions began
it was a time when on the surface everything seemed fine, but beneath the
surface something was brewing. Todd Haynes’ Far
From Heaven (2002) jumps back to that era through the lens of Douglas Sirk
and explores issues that today can be openly discussed, but back then people
barely had a name for them.
In order to fully
appreciate this movie it really helps if you are familiar with the works of its
main inspiration, the films of Douglas Sirk who is best known for his 1950s
melodramas. Lucky for me I spent the summer of 2009 at the University of
British Columbia where I took a course on Hollywood Cinema from 1930 to 1960
and part of the curriculum was watching Sirk’s 1955 romance All That Heaven Allows starring Rock
Hudson and Jane Wyman. (What joy it is to be able to study cinema in a
classroom.) As the story was about the tentative romance between an affluent
suburban widow and her much younger gardener, at the time it was seen as a
critique of the 1950s conformity.
However by
today’s standards a widowed woman dating a younger man is pretty tame in terms
of taboo relationships so Haynes’ 2002 film pushes the envelope even further by
having his leads engage in relationships that even today are still slightly
frowned upon. Julianne Moore stars as Cathy Whitaker, a wife, mother, and
homemaker in 1957 Connecticut. Her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is a successful
executive for a company that sells television advertisement. Put them on a the
cover of a magazine and the header could read “America’s Perfect White Couple.”
Except if you
scratch below the surface you will find things are not so perfect. One day
Cathy is somewhat concerned to see a black man in her backyard. When she
realises the man is Raymond (Dennis Haysbert) the son of her late gardener she
is reassured and strikes a casual friendship. However she becomes tempted to
make the relationship more than casual when she discovers Frank has secrets of
his own. While she has been pushing racial boundaries by hanging out with a
black man, Frank has been spending time with men in hotel rooms.
Both of these
illicit relationships hit the wall of the social conventions of the time. When
Cathy and Raymond are seen spending time together in a black neighbourhood, the
white people start gossiping about Cathy and for Raymond the consequences are a
lot more physical. As for Frank, he tries to deal with his “problem” through a
conversion therapy that is recommended by a doctor (James Rebhorn) as though he
was prescribing a cure for a skin infection.
When I saw Far From Heaven playing on TV a few
months after UBC I noticed it not only had the same colour palette but the same
mood and speech patterns as a Sirk film. The result is a movie that looks like
it was made over 50 years ago, but tells a story that could not possibly have
been told at the time.
Since 2002 many
more films and TV shows have come out exploring the social restrictions of that
particular era, notably Mad Men and Masters of Sex. People who express
nostalgia for those good old days should really take a good look at those shows
and remember that things were perfect only if you were white, rich, and
straight as an arrow. Otherwise you were not welcomed in the big country club.
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