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Article: Jack Foley
Creating a Fifties-era melodrama today and playing it straight,
smack in the midst of this pumped-up, adrenaline-crazed era, might
seem like a perplexing impulse. Yet the strongest melodramas are
those without apparent villains, where characters end up hurting
each other unwittingly, just by pursuing their desires.
To impose upon the seeming innocence of the 1950s themes as mutually
volatile as race and sexuality is to reveal how volatile those
subjects remain today - and how much our current climate of complacent
stability has in common with that bygone era - Director's statement,
from Todd Haynes.
Far From Heaven explores several social themes: racism, homosexuality,
and the role of women in families. In making the film set in the
1950s, Haynes notes he 'was very aware of the sense of superiority
that we all feel about the '50s because, in some ways, the decade
has been reduced to a series of cliches around suburban, conser |
