Julianne Moore faces a family crisis in Todd Haynes’s FAR FROM HEAVEN
FAR FROM HEAVEN (Todd Haynes, 2002)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, June 11, 5:00
Series continues through June 19
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.farfromheavenmovie.com
Douglas Sirk and Thomas Mann would be proud. In Todd Haynes’s wonderfully retro Far from Heaven, Oscar-nominated Julianne Moore is amazing as 1950s housewife Cathy Whitaker, who thinks she has the perfect idyllic suburban life — until she discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret that dare not speak its name. Mr. & Mrs. Magnatech they are not after all. When she starts getting all chummy with the black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), people start talking, of course. Part Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959), part Death in Venice, and oh-so-original, Haynes’s awesome achievement will have you believing you’re watching a film made in the 1950s, propelled by Elmer Bernstein’s excellent music, Edward Lachman’s remarkable photography, and Mark Friedberg’s terrific production design. Far from Heaven is screening at MoMA on June 11 with Tom Kalin’s 1991 short finally destroy us as part of the series “Drama Queens — The Soap Opera in Experimental and Independent Cinema,” which continues with such films as Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955), Bette Gordon’s Variety (1984), and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Angst essen Seele auf (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) (1973), many of which are also paired with short works.