Far
From Heaven
Much has been made of Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven, his homage to the films of 1950s director Douglas Sirk. Coming to prominence in 1954 with Magnificent Obsession and followed by All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, Sirk dared to peek beneath the veneer of the American Dream, exposing its hypocrisy, prejudice, and repression.
Haynes tinkers little with the Sirk formula in Far From Heaven. His script follows a 1950s love affair doomed by society’s inability to accept the differences between the lovers. This time it isn’t only class that separates society wife Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) and her gardener, Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), but race as well. The other taboo subject Haynes decides to pull kicking and screaming into the spotlight is homosexuality.
Far From Heaven is a well-acted, engaging, and visually beautiful movie. Haynes and his director of photography Edward Lachman go to great lengths to recreate the glossy, Technicolor glory of Sirk’s films, with shots that look as though they are still-wet oil paintings.
On the surface, Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid) is a well-adjusted, hard-working executive on the rise, but he is deeply troubled by his homosexual longings. He attends aversion therapy after he’s found out by his faithful wife Cathy, who is dealing with her loneliness by spending more time with African-American gardener Raymond. Her backstabbing friends gossip about her relationship with Raymond, and soon Cathy not only finds her marriage on the rocks but her standing in society as well.
The guilt-ridden confessions, angry recriminations, and emotional breakdowns
are handled with sensitivity and genuine emotion. The film works as well as
it does because Haynes and his cast approach the often shopworn issues seriously.
Quaid plays against type, embodying the tension and frustration that comes from
living a lie. The actor has never been better and has firmly put aside his reckless,
pretty boy image. He has become a courageous performer and is exciting to watch.
Though Haysbert has a less showy role, he provides a sturdy presence and sense
of calm amidst the film’s theatrics–no easy task. And Moore trumps them all.
She taps into Cathy’s struggle and pain, breathes in a repressed sorrow, puts
on a brave face, and yet subtly reveals a strength to live the life she chooses,
despite society’s scorn. Her efforts and those of her co-stars are good enough
reasons to take a ride in Haynes’ Wayback Machine.(CK)
(Running time 1:47; rated PG-13)
Grade B
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Just Married
No question about it, being cute can get you pretty far in the movies. Ashton Kutcher’s (That 70’s Show) success is based on his ability to turn on the charm, while up-and-coming actress Brittany Murphy is adorable and full of talent as well. Putting these two together is a no-brainer. Too bad this casting move is the most inspired thing about Just Married, in which Ashton and Murphy’s natural chemistry make what would have been a truly awful exercise into something just shy of bearable.
It’s a simple premise. Sarah (Murphy) is a cultured young lady whose father is loaded and whose siblings have grown up to be highbrow snobs. Tom (Kutcher) is an unmotivated slacker whose idea of planning ahead is making sure there’s enough beer in the fridge for the next Dodgers telecast. They meet when he accidentally drills her with a football on the beach. They quickly fall in love, move in together, and marry, all in less than a year before embarking on their honeymoon to Europe. Between the Alps and Venice, they learn that they have less in common than they thought, that having sex doesn’t resolve all arguments, and that their class differences have more significance than they thought.
The script by Sam Harper is as thin as tissue paper, and he strings the simplistic
plot together with one slapstick scene after another, all of them unimaginatively
executed and woefully predictable. Shawn Levy’s tepid direction doesn’t help
either. The story drags itself from one plot point to the next, making for a
very long 94 minutes. Had a faster pace been employed (think of the classic
screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s) Married might have been a hit.
Kutcher and Murphy bring to life two appealing characters we hope will get together.
But this isn’t enough. Harper and Levy fail to realize that a romantic comedy
can’t be based merely on the couple’s appealing physical attributes. After all,
movies, like relationships, require lots of work. (CK)
(Running time 1:34; rated PG-13)
Grade C
Antwone Fisher
The evolution of Antwone Fisher–from serendipitously noticed minor novel to major movie with full-page ads–sounds like a canned Hollywood fairytale. Inspired by a memoir called Finding Fish, the book first caught the eye of a security guard at Sony Pictures 10 years ago. The security guard went on to become producer Todd Black, who has cultivated the project from the ground up. Black helped the book’s author, Antwone Fisher, pen the screenplay. The turning point came when Black sent the script to Denzel Washington, who agreed to star in the picture on the condition that he would direct it. The result is a sentimental, simplistic yarn about a troubled young black man coming to terms with his past. While Washington doesn’t show much deftness or originality in his directorial debut, he elicits an exceptional performance from newcomer Derek Luke.
Luke stars as the titular young naval cadet who is prone to violent outbursts, often attacking his shipmates with an unwelcome punch to the face. When he is sent to see an in-house psychiatrist (Washington) to deal with his problem, it’s apparent from the first session that Fisher’s troubles can be traced back to his childhood. The sailor defiantly answers the question of where he comes from by saying, “Under a rock,” tipping Washington off to the possibility that there might have been some unhappiness at home. Initially refusing to take part in therapy, Fisher finally opens up and the floodgates part, as the youngster sheds light on his mother, who gave birth to him in prison, his father, who was shot by an ex-girlfriend shortly after he was born, and his abusive foster family.
Only partially sidestepping Hollywood’s mindless version of psychoanalysis, Antwone Fisher presents a quick fix. Compelled to behave after forging a familial bond with his doc and getting a girlfriend (Joy Bryant), Fisher sets out to locate his kin.
Here the film veers, if only slightly, from its Good Will Hunting template, in which the doctor-cum-father exorcises the psychological demons of the past. Although Antwone Fisher rightly avoids the doctor-as-savior motif, it does cross much of the same irksome ground as the Matt Damon-Ben Affleck hit. Like that film, Antwone Fisher is about getting to the bottom of a deep, dark secret of sexual abuse and fixing it by the reassertion of heterosexuality. Recalling all the chest thumping between Matt Damon and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, which culminates in Damon’s homophonic blue-collar prodigy being convinced that hugging his male doctor doesn’t make him a fag, Fisher is reassured of his own masculinity once he loses his virginity. While both films gray the line between displaying homophobia and endorsing it, Antwone Fisher is on shakier ground.
Despite Luke’s groundbreaking turn as the needy, sensitive, and volatile Fisher, Washington’s film is splintered, predictable, and tacks on an ineffective subplot in which the doc’s own marriage is in shambles. Failing to focus on the cultural significances of its hero’s predicament, the film glosses over the racial issues at hand. Fisher begins the film as an angry and defiant young black man who is all too aware of white society’s oppressive disdain for men like him, and ends as a tame, well-rounded naval graduate–a transformation that might even be seen as a regression. At a seminal moment in the film, Fisher describes himself as a good black man. He has, among other things, never fathered any children, taken drugs, imbibed a drop of alcohol, or committed a crime.
Fisher sounds like a perfectly safe African American male devised by the white
power structure. By casting its title character in a perfectionist light, Antwone
Fisher comes off as more of a construct than a dynamic human being, making it
difficult for the audience to be moved by his triumphant life story. (RD)
(Running time 1:53; rated PG-13)
Grade C+
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2003.
