Film Buff Movie of the Month: Far From Heaven (2002) and All That Heaven Allows (1955)

by HELEN GEIB

Short posts on my film club’s “movie of the month” series.

Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven is an arthouse remake of Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows. How “arthouse”? It’s remake/re-imagining, stylistic homage, and critical commentary in one. Both films are glorious expressions of stylized and stylish visuals.

The 1950s film combined women’s picture melodrama with message movie and the 2002 remake does the same, but the messages have changed. All That Heaven Allows is a May-September romance between an older woman and younger man. The romance further bridges a class divide; she’s an upper class housewife and he works with his hands. (Although, given that he owns a prosperous landscaping business and a large piece of land, the class division doesn’t seem nearly so transgressive to the viewer- not the modern viewer at least- as it evidently does to the characters.) And lastly, the film bludgeons the audience with an anti-consumerist/conformist, pro-simple living message. Thoreau is actually quoted.

Haynes’ film, while preserving the mid-1950s prosperous small town New England setting, locates its messages in questions of race and sexuality. An updating perhaps partly driven by topicality for its own sake, but also designed to capture, by focusing on the driving issues of its own day, the original’s contemporary social relevance. The class division still exists but is subsumed within the overriding divide of race as the heroine’s love interest is transformed into a black man. And where Sirk’s heroine was a widow free to love again if only her children and her social circle would allow it, Haynes resurrects the husband- and makes him gay.

Original and remake alike showcase an excellent lead actress performance. However, Julianne Moore was luckier in her male co-stars than Jane Wyman was in hers. Moore’s romantic interest is played by an effective Dennis Haysbert and Dennis Quaid gives the performance of his career as her husband. Wyman’s co-star was the aptly named Rock Hudson.

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Indy Film Buffs Movie of the Month Series for 2011

January: The Big Lebowski (1998)
February: Footlight Parade (1933)
March: The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)
April: Double Indemnity (1944)
May: The Killer (1989)
June: The Wild Bunch (1969)
July: Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
August: Far From Heaven (2002)
September: All That Heaven Allows (1955)
October: Eastern Promises (2007)
November: The Roaring Twenties (1939)