When "Far from Heaven" was released in 2002, it became gay director Todd Haynes' biggest success, voted Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle and garnering four Oscar nominations. This was quite an accomplishment for the New Queer Cinema pioneer. Now Kino Lorber has released the film for the first time on Blu-ray in a gorgeous transfer that captures the iridescence of its rich, pastel colors. The film was intended as homage to 1950s melodrama director Douglas Sirk, especially his 1955 "All That Heaven Allows" and 1959 "Imitation of Life." Haynes recreates how the period looked on a Hollywood sound stage. He imitates the style, but maintains a contemporary point of view on two social issues, racism and homosexuality.
Fall 1957 in suburban Hartford, Connecticut finds the perfect Leave-It-to-Beaver family, wife-mother Cathy (Julianne Moore) and husband-father Frank (Dennis Quaid), a successful Magnatech sales executive. Cathy receives a phone call from the local police that Frank has been arrested. He claims it's a mix-up, but actually he was caught at a gay bar. Cathy is being profiled by a magazine as the ideal matriarch, while Frank is always staying late at the office. Cathy brings him dinner at the office, and walks in on him kissing another man. Frank agrees to meet with a doctor so he can overcome his "problem" with conversion therapy. He drinks to deal with the strain of his marriage disintegrating and his increasing workload.
Meanwhile Cathy meets Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), her African-American gardener, turning to him for comfort. She spots him at a local art show, talking with him to the consternation of onlookers. Frank is drunk at their annual gala party, and afterwards is unable to have sex with Cathy. Upset, he accidentally strikes her. The next day Cathy spends an afternoon with Raymond, at a restaurant together. A neighbor sees her, spreading malicious gossip that they are having an affair. Frank is furious, and Cathy agrees to end her friendship with Raymond.
During the Christmas holidays, Cathy and Frank travel to Miami, where Frank has an assignation with a young guy. After they return, Frank tells Cathy he has fallen in love with this man and wants a divorce. Because of the fallout from their friendship, Raymond's daughter Sarah is attacked by two white students, and rocks are thrown at the windows of their home by African Americans also angered by their relationship. Cathy learns what has happened to Sarah and rushes to Raymond's house to figure out what can happen now that she will be single. What that decision will be concludes the film.
The audience is presented with an idealized setting, but Haynes shows the cracks underneath, emotional truths that could only be hinted at in the original Sirk films. He reveals how beauty and perfection can be oppressive. Exquisite cinematography by Edward Lachman shows how even their home environment suffocates these characters, with camera movements suggesting that Cathy and her life are being constantly examined. Both Cathy and Frank seek authenticity, she trying to free herself from restraining gender roles, and he coming out to his true sexual nature. Haynes wants us to "see beyond the color of things," literally and metaphorically. The elegant Elmer Bernstein (a composer of Hollywood's Golden Age) score abets the river of emotion the audience will feel for the characters.
Moore unjustly lost the Oscar to Nicole Kidman's Virginia Woolf in "The Hours." Both Quaid and Haysbart give terrific performances, ditto for Patricia Clarkson as Cathy's fair-weather bigoted best friend. Haynes distills the past so that these issues seem as relevant today as they should have been in the 1950s. "Far from Heaven" is one of the great films of this century.