On
Gender
Julianne
Moore says, "The character that I play is a very traditional
’50s homemaker and I particularly wanted her to be a classic
American ideal, the women that you’ve seen in all those movies
from the ’50s. She should be this ideal – and then you
see her life deviate from that ideal pattern.
"In
this film, there are issues of bigotry and prejudice, but this
is ultimately Todd’s most feminist movie. His point is that
here might be sexual differences and cultural differences and
racial differences, but the first and most important difference
is determined at birth – whether you’re a boy or a girl.
Everything in Cathy’s life is defined by her very femaleness.
As much as the men in the film are going through all these things,
they’re the ones who manage to go on. Cathy is the one left
behind, because she is female."
Moore,
like Haynes, believes that the story in the film is not dated
and is completely relevant to our modern lives. She explains,
"Although people are kind of loath to say it, I think that
there is a way we publicly live our lives. In Far from Heaven,
you see people being forced into certain social situations and
having to behave in a particular way because of the place they’re
in and the people they’re speaking to. But then there are
the private moments, where they reveal other things. As an actor,
it’s a wonderful thing to do, to be able to do both the public
and the private in the same film."
On
Sexuality and a Secret Life
Todd
Haynes notes, "Far from Heaven does deviate from the thematic
possibilities afforded films in the ’50s in its depiction
of homosexuality. Before the 1960s, homosexuality could only be
alluded to in American film by way of comically flamboyant or
ridiculous supporting characters or cameos."
Douglas
Sirk cast a little-known Universal contract player, Rock Hudson,
as the lead in his 1954 film MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. The picture,
produced by the openly gay Ross Hunter, was a hit and made Hudson
a star. The actor would go on to star in four more films for the
same director and producer.
Haynes
adds, "So, homosexuality, while behind-the-scenes, was indeed
evident in the making of the films – as it was, arguably,
in the aesthetics of many directors of ‘women’s films,’
like George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli. While thematically restricted,
a gay or ‘feminine’ aesthetic was free to pervade the
profuse visual style of those films: the clothes, the colors,
the lavish décor. Far from Heaven may just be bringing
into the level of content what was always there, bristling beneath
the surface."
In
Far from Heaven, Cathy’s husband Frank, played by Dennis
Quaid, is forced to finally admit to his homosexuality when his
wife discovers his feelings. Haynes comments, "At the time,
homosexuality was considered an illness. Even in the most civil
and well-educated circles, that was considered the tolerant way
of looking at the condition. Yet when I did research on homosexuality
and its treatment at that particular time, I was surprised. You
think of the ’50s, you assume shock treatment and all of
these horrific, panicky things because we think of the ’50s
as so patently repressive. In fact, there were breakthroughs in
the late ’40s and in some writings, doctors were saying that
this was not a sickness and that you really can’t change
it. So it was actually more progressive than I thought.
"But
I feel that, for someone like Frank, there are no examples around
him of any positive way to look to, to be, to live, to exist in
this moat. So the only way for him to get through the day was
to decide he was going to fix it: there must be a way to stitch
it up and let it heal, or take a medicine or whatever, and that’s
the way he approached it. But that doesn’t work, and it shouldn’t
and it can’t."
The
casting of actor Dennis Quaid, who throughout his career has so
effortlessly embodied comfortable masculinity on-screen, enhances
the role of Frank, the suburban "Pop" and husband who
can no longer hide the truth of his homosexuality from himself
or his wife.
Quaid
notes, "I’d seen a couple of Todd’s movies and
found him to be an artist, with a very interesting point of view
about life. When I read the script, my first impression was that
it would be good for me to play this character because I hadn’t
done a role like this before – and had never seen this character
situation in a film. On the exterior, it looks like Frank has
the perfect life: he has a wife and two kids and he’s a top
sales executive for Magnatech TV. But he’s very troubled
and shamed by his secret life.
"What
I appreciated about Todd’s writing and direction is that
it would have been very easy to parody these people and have a
laugh, but he doesn’t: there is an emotional integrity to
it. It’s set in the ’50s, a time when people swept things
under the carpet; behind those neat rose palaces that people lived
in, all kinds of drama went on that we never knew about. Things
are more open these days, but people still have the same emotions
and feelings."
Haynes
says, "Dennis and I talked after he’d read the script.
While we spoke about the style being inseparable from the content,
one of the things that drew him to the film was the fact that
he’d never played a character like this before: a gay man,
and one so conflicted. He understood the conflict that Frank is
going through not just as an actor but as a person, because he
said that he’s had some very close friends for whom this
has been the case."
Of
his on-screen same-sex kiss, Quaid remarks, "It’s all
about being a human being, it’s all about love. Like any
love scene, the hardest part was just waiting around to do it.
And once you’ve done the scene three or four times –
hey, it’s all in a day’s work."
Haynes
confirms, "There was no problem with Dennis doing that scene.
He started, in the initial takes, in a more muscular kind of way.
I said that it needed to be more simple – romantic and tender.
That is harder, and maybe more threatening, to portray. But he
was great."
On
Race
Far
from Heaven also explores the relationship between blacks and
whites in 1950s suburbia. Dennis Haysbert plays Raymond, the widower
gardener to whom Cathy is drawn. Haysbert himself was drawn to
the film’s "emotional content. In the fewest words,
it’s ‘love unrequited.’ I loved my character, I
loved all the characters, I always wanted to work with Julianne
Moore, so I said, ‘Let’s go.’" That was easier
said than done, as the shooting schedule of Far from Heaven was
concurrent with the one for the TV series "24," in which
Haysbert costars. But the actor managed to work on both projects
at once, commuting between the West and East Coasts.
In
his trips East for Far from Heaven, Haysbert found his director
to be "a man who definitely knows what he wants. At once
I felt very comfortable."
Haynes
in turn found the actor to be "this amazingly gentle and
lovely and smart and grounded man. He is all of those things that
you see in the film. Julianne so loved working with him, and between
them it worked exactly as it was conceived in the writing."
Haysbert
notes, "Raymond is a good man born at the wrong time. He
and Cathy live in a time where they just don’t fit with what
people perceive to be normal. They’re two people caught in
this world and they’re not going to be able to be together
because they have too many people close to them that will be hurt.
So they sacrifice."
The
burgeoning relationship between Cathy and Raymond highlights the
taboo that was interracial dating and marriage in the ’50s,
in both the white and the black communities. Like ’50s Hollywood
melodramas, Far from Heaven is set primarily in the wealthy, white
world. Haynes notes that "there is the whole world of black
Hartford that we do not see. We see it all through the little
perfectly white happy family keyhole that is Cathy Whitaker’s
point of view. It’s like this moment in IMITATION OF LIFE
that is so beautiful: Lana Turner has spent her entire life with
her maid, Juanita Moore, and the maid is dying. She says she wants
a great funeral with all her friends there, and Lana Turner says,
‘Annie, I didn’t know that you had friends.’ And
Juanita Moore says, ‘Well, Miss Laura, you never asked.’
That tells you that this film has left something big out –
and not only has Lana Turner never shown interest in her black
maid’s life, neither have we the audience. We never asked,
and we didn’t even think about it until it was brought up
in the dialogue. It both shows you what’s not there and acknowledges
that it should have been there and we didn’t even think about
it. It’s not necessarily Lana Turner’s problem as much
as it is all of ours.
"There’s
a nod to IMITATION OF LIFE in Far from Heaven with the sequence
where Cathy is asking her maid, Sybil [Viola Davis], ‘You
must know of a good charity,’ and the NAACP comes but she
doesn’t have time for them. Even in her own good intentions,
Cathy is whisking past real people with real lives that she isn’t
interacting with in a deep way."
Mindful
of life imitating art, Haynes comments, "You know, it’s
hard to cast a strong actress like Viola Davis and put her in
maid’s clothes and have her saying, ‘Yes, Mrs. Whitaker…No,
Mrs. Whitaker.’ But we were trying to show the double standard
and partial vision of white America. Not just how it deals with
race but how that partial vision is reflected in the films that
come out of white America. Viola was smart and secure, and loved
the film’s story."
Haysbert
muses, "This is probably the film I’ve done that I’m
most proud of. It’s a very interesting period for me to portray.
It’s so uncomfortable in a lot of ways. People can’t
seem to get beyond the color of Raymond’s skin. But, in trying
to act on his sensibilities, he gets it from both sides: the people
of color as well as their white counterparts. It’s pretty
balanced among unbalanced ways of thinking."
Haynes
adds, "Raymond represents, for Cathy, a possible liberation
from her life and her fate. Raymond represents integrity but he’s
flawed too. He believes, too much, that the white world and the
black world can co-exist. He encourages his 11-year-old daughter,
Sarah, to interact with white culture and then they’re both
punished."
