Rebecca Arnold, Artist Blog: Todd Haynes

Director Todd Haynes has produced such movies as Poison, and I'm Not There. But his biggest film hit was Far From Heaven, using his lead actress Julianne Moore to explore the theme of suburban alienation. The issues are set back in a time when taboo concerns were never discussed.

Far From Heaven is an homage to Douglas Sirk’s Hollywood melodrama, All That Heaven Allows, but the storyline Haynes created is very different than that of Sirk's - introducing a homosexual husband who drives his wife Cathy into a taboo relationship with the family’s African-American gardener.

I chose this weeks Artist because of his unbelievably beautiful imagery. Not only is the storyline of the movie captivating, but the set and cinematography are breathtaking. You can really see his Douglas Sirk-esque techniques as a classically beautiful melodrama.

In an interview about Far From Heaven, Haynes talks about the artifice of film, a subject I'm obviously interested in. "Everything about film is always artificial," Haynes remarks. "You can come to something far more surprisingly real by acknowledging how much of a construct it is first. It always feels so much more false to me when you set out to be real."

Not only does he address the concept of artifice, but he also discusses the contemporary twist of a 50's movie set filmed today. "When most people see films set in the '50s today," he says, "there's an immediate sense of superiority. It's all about the myth that as time moves on, we become more progressive. Oh wow, they didn't know what sex was until we started to give it to them from our contemporary perspective. So the '50s become a sort of earmark point of oppressive politics and climate, which is very flattering to us as we look back."

Todd Haynes directed this film beautifully and focuses on the elements of film, how it would be viewed today and how his concepts can be translated, rather than just simple filming for storyline. I really respect that about him, and his obvious study of a classic melodramatic director Douglas Sirk. I'll be looking into Sirk's work this week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_from_Heaven

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001331/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0297884/

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_3_41/ai_94122695/