FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Far From Heaven [DVD] [2003]

Far From Heaven [DVD] [2003]
enlarge	Director: Todd Haynes Actors: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson, Viola Davis Studio: Entertainment in Video Category: DVD List Price: ~~£19.99~~ Buy New: £2.41 as of 22/11/2009 02:39 GMT details You Save: £17.58 (88%) New (14) Used (21) from £1.56 Seller: direct_offers_uk Rating: 15 reviews Sales Rank: 17603 Format: PAL Language: English (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over Region: 2 Discs: 1 Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 107 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5017239191909 ASIN: B0000C88MR Theatrical Release Date: November 22, 2002 Release Date: October 20, 2003 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Editorial Reviews: Amazon.co.uk Review IFar from Heaven/I is a uniquely beautiful film from one of the smartest and most idiosyncratic of contemporary directors, Todd Haynes (ISafe/I and IVelvet Goldmine/I). It takes the lush 1950s visual style of so-called women's pictures (particularly those of Douglas Sirk, director of IImitation of Life/I and IMagnificent Obsession/I) to tell a story that mixes both sexual and racial prejudice. Julianne Moore, portraying an amazing fusion of vulnerability and will power, plays a housewife whose husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret gay life. When she finds solace in the company of a black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), rumours and peer pressure destroy any chance she has at happiness. It's astonishing how a movie with such a stylised veneer can be so emotionally compelling; the cast and filmmakers have such an impeccable command of the look and feel of the genre that every moment is simultaneously artificial and deeply felt. IFar from Heaven/I is ingenious and completely engrossing. --IBret Fetzer/I

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 15 1 2 3 Next » The dark side of Father Knows Best February 28, 2006 Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) 14 out of 14 found this review helpful If you#x27;ve been around long enough to remember those 50s shows like "Father Knows Best", you#x27;ll remember how perfect life for the American WASP middle class was depicted as being. Perfect father, mother, marriage, children (or at least reasonably well behaved), job (for Dad - Mom stayed home), house, schools, and neighborhood. If there was a dark side, it didn#x27;t extend further than one of the Anderson kids complaining about having to help set the perfect table for the perfect home-cooked dinner. America had single-handedly won WWII (what Eastern Front?) and was keeping the world safe for democracy. Ike was President, and life was grand. For those of us who lived even a close approximation, it was.pFAR FROM HEAVEN begins just that way. Frank Whitaker (Dennis Quaid) and his All-American blonde wife Cathy (Julianne Moore) - the high school cheerleader/prom queen sort who probably married right after graduation - own a perfect (and huge) home in a perfect neighborhood of Hartford, CN where you can#x27;t see the perfect neighbors for all the trees (gloriously clothed in perfect fall colors). The Whitakers have two perfect kids, and Frank manages the local office of mighty Magnatech. It#x27;s 1957, and when the Whitaker boy says "Oh, gee!", Mom reprimands him for his bad language. Frank wears a suit, tie and hat; Cathy wears full skirts and is perfectly coifed. In this all-white world, the only Blacks are the perfect housekeeper Sybil (Viola Davis) and the perfect gardener Ray (Dennis Haysbert). But there#x27;s a flip side.pIn the film#x27;s leading role, Moore turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as the 50s-perfect wife whose perfect life implodes on the day she discovers hubby, ostensibly working late, in his office passionately kissing another man. And she#x27;s so pathetically grateful when Frank reluctantly consents to undergo psychiatric treatment. But then, in her growing loneliness, she befriends Ray, who#x27;s just taken over his deceased father#x27;s yard maintenance business. Ray is educated, sensitive, soft-spoken, gentle, and the single father of a young daughter. One day, Cathy accepts Ray#x27;s offer to take her on a short errand out of town to pick up some shrubs. On the way back, they stop for lunch at a roadhouse. Cathy is seen exiting Ray#x27;s truck by a local gossip, who soon pours gasoline on the smoldering racism of the Whitakers#x27; neighbors. Even Cathy#x27;s best friend Eleanor (Patricia Clarkson) is appalled. Finally, thinking all is at least approaching right again with Frank (who#x27;s undergoing that therapy, remember?), off Cathy and her troubled spouse go for an idyllic winter vacation in Miami, a place peopled with handsome young men. Oh oh, big mistake.pIn a role very different from the congenial characters recently played in FREQUENCY and THE ROOKIE, Quaid is darkly effective as the tortured Frank. And Haysbert is perhaps another Denzel Washington in the making. The "look" of the film is superb, recreating the fashion, cars, home and office decor, and technology of the period to an uncanny degree. pFAR FROM HEAVEN gives the viewers a glimpse at the dark side of an ideal time perhaps existing only in nostalgia and Norman Rockwell prints. It presages the turmoil and changes in a society on the verge of irrevocable evolution. For American audiences, this deserves to be a great film. For foreign audiences who didn#x27;t share in America#x27;s 50s bounty, it may be something less, but at least they can see where we come from. i looked beneath the surface and it was PERFECT... June 21, 2004 J. A. R. King (ENGLAND) 9 out of 9 found this review helpful I think this movie is the best movie to come out of hollywood in years. I really identified with Dennis Quaids character and felt equally sorry for his wife played with genius by Julliane Moore. The ending was very moving and I felt sad that many of the issues dealt with in the movie are still problems with some people today. I was also impressed with the use of colour in the movie and was suprised to discover that no digital tweaking or colour enhancment was used on the film. Overall i think the picture should have won more at the acadamy awards, its not often that this much care and attention goes into a movie aimed at the masses. Simply Wonderful. This film oozes... August 27, 2003 27 out of 30 found this review helpful Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven," the best film of the year, is the kind of movie lover's dream that requires more suspension of disbelief than your usual fantasy or musical. It demands a willingness of the viewer to be transported back to a time when movies were shot on studio back lots and came with a lush artificiality and a distinct archness.brLike "8 Women," the current FranÁois Ozon French romp, "Far From Heaven" gets its inspiration from the florid melodramas that director Douglas Sirk made in collaboration with producer Ross Hunter at Universal, working within the 1950s studio system. However, whereas Ozon has fun, merely flirting with signature Sirk ingredients, Haynes is serious and goes further. He re-creates Sirk's soapy tableaux with such a single-minded, virtuosic flair that his bid for perfection becomes an unconstrained fetish.brThe result is a film that works as a tribute to a specific bygone film genre and style, but also to the era itself -- the 1950s in all its repressed, hypocritical glory. "Far From Heaven" doesn't merely play like a '50s-style movie. It is a '50s movie. Except for a couple of taboo issues that Haynes has moved from the background into the forefront, he's created a film that looks and feels as if it was made in 1957, the year in which his story is set.brThe old-style opening credits immediately signal that we are in Eisenhower's America, where the notion of "normalcy" is a lie that shrouds the real desires and needs of people. Sirk's camera would trail behind his glamourous leading ladies (usually Jane Wyman, Lana Turner or Dorothy Malone) and peer through the openings of the curtains that concealed the secrets within their perfectly attired suburban homes.brHaynes does the same, but he opens those drapes little by little to expose the hidden truths.brJulianne Moore (made up here to look like Malone) is Cathy, a housewife and society matron who lives in the fashionable section of Hartford, Conn. At first, we have a tendency to peg Cathy. In order of importance, she has it all -- social standing, a knockout wardrobe, a splendid Colonial home with all the modern conveniences (and a maid), two beautiful children and a handsome husband with a good career.brDennis Quaid, continuing an amazing comeback, is Frank Whitaker, Cathy's husband and top sales executive at something called Magnatech. At weekly cocktail parties, Cathy and Frank are toasted as "Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech."brYes, it's easy to judge Cathy by her acquisitiveness, but, as we quickly learn, she's a really nice woman with a streak of decency that will prove to be her undoing. Trouble starts to brew on the day Cathy greets her new gardener -- Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert) -- who has taken over for his late father. A reporter is in Cathy's living room, there to do a society column on her and Frank, and the woman happens to see Cathy touch the shoulder of Raymond -- who is "colored" -- as Cathy consoles him.brWhen the column appears, describing Cathy as "a woman as devoted to her family as she is kind to Negroes," the good (white) people of Hartford are aghast, even Cathy's best friend, the otherwise liberal-minded Eleanor Fine (Patricia Clarkson in a wonderfully wicked turn). Meanwhile, Frank starts acting peculiar, following other men into dark alleys, movie theaters and bars. On one occasion, Cathy has to bail him out of jail following a vague, drunken "indiscretion." "All because of one lousy drink," Frank complains.brShe has no idea what's going on. Why, Cathy's offended when their son, Davey, uses expressions like "jeez" and "jiminy." But, late one night, she discovers the truth. Frank calls home and says he has to work late. So Cathy decides to surprise him by taking his supper into the office -- where she catches Frank passionately kissing another man. She insists that he see a doctor. Frank agrees and goes into "aversion therapy" and, although no "cure" is promised, he beams, "I'm going to beat this thing," as if he's talking about his drinking problem.brWhile this may read like a parody, "Far From Heaven" never plays that way. Frank's self-loathing, for example, becomes more evident, with Frank saying, "I know this is a sickness because I feel despicable." No, the film is played straight, and we are immediately absorbed by the societal restrictions of the time.brAs Frank continues his dalliances with his new lover and gets ugly at home, Cathy endures her pain and falls into the arms of Raymond. Eleanor, who can halfway accept Frank's homosexuality, can't tolerate Cathy's relationship with Raymond. Soon there is gossip and, in a scene that underlines the hypocrisy of the times, Frank finds out about Cathy and Raymond and yells at his wife about how she is ruining the reputation of the family.br"Far From Heaven" is a triumph of style, from its sets to its acting. Haynes gives his film an aura reminiscent of waxed fruit, one of the era's more curious household acoutrements. And his cast members all look as if they are posing for an old Life magazine spread, with both Moore and Quaid giving their best performances to date (and, in Quaid's case, his bravest) as their characters speak in '50s-style code.brThe film oozes craft. If there's any justice in Hollywood (and, unfortunately, there usually isn't), "Far From Heaven" should sweep this year's Oscars come March 23, with statuettes going to Haynes (for both his direction and his script) and the film itself, along with Moore (best actress), Quaid (best actor), Clarkson (supporting actress), Haysbert (supporting actor), Edward Lachman (cinematography), James Lyons (editing), Mark Friedberg (production design), Sandy Powell (costumes) and the great Elmer Bernstein, who has written the quintessential Elmer Bernstein score for this utterly flawless movie -- again, the year's best. Subtle and powerful story telling February 7, 2005 R. Clements (Nottingham, England) 8 out of 9 found this review helpful I have wanted to see this film ever since I saw a review of it on Film 2004. There it was given a luke warm response, but I thought I would still give it a go.pI was more than impressed. All actors concerned are wonderful, and the writing and directing of the film is exquisite. brI do think you have to take into account the fact that Director was trying to emulate an earlier style of film, and any differences as compared to modern acting/direction styles should be taken into consideration. There is an efficiancy to the character and story portrayal.pEven so, for a story of a 'simple' suburban household it subtly conveys the periods attitudes to race and sex with shocking impact. It does show how far we have come with relation to these attitudes, and reminds us we have further to go.pRecommended, and deserves several viewings. What a magnificent obsession August 22, 2003 5 out of 8 found this review helpful As you might expect with Todd Haynes as director, you'll either love this film or loathe it. On the surface a remake of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows, with its sumptuous colour, stylised acting and dialogue, it becomes something so much more. Set in the 1950's, it's a story of a woman who finds herself trapped in a marriage with a husband who can't love her, and tries to find love with the gardener. It's what goes on beneath the suburban, small town prejudices that's important. A spectacular performance from Julianne Moore as Cathy, a naive housewife secure in her world, as she comes to terms with her husband's sexuality and gains a quiet, almost desperate courage in pursuing love regardless of society's prejudice is enough to break your heart. Dennis Quaid as the repressed gay husband and Dennis Haysbert as the gardener are the icing on the cake. Film of the year. Showing reviews 1-5 of 15 1 2 3 Next »

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