I have to start off by confessing that I am a huge fan of melodramas. Yes, I subscribe to the womanly "weepie" film-- often citing films such as Mildred Pierce or my favorite film of all time, Casablanca, as guilty pleasures. This is one of the reasons I appreciated Williams' article on the gratuitous nature of referring to these pleasure-seeking films as gratuitous. It's a complete baseless critique to call these films overtly emotional because that is where the audience derives pleasure from. (Williams, 728) These films are not viewed for their adherence to reality, but the spectacle of that reality being challenged. Williams cites Moretti: "Pathos is thus a surrender to reality, but it is a surrender that pays homage to the ideal that tried to wage war on it." (739)
In light of this, I was incredibly surprised to find that Far From Heaven (Haynes, 2002) did not yield that usual pleasure-filled-spectacle I am used to with this genre. I completely understand that this film is an homage to a time when these issues were first being addressed (and taking them past the euphemisms Willis describes within Sirk's films), but the post-modernist tendencies within the film almost make light of the issues being discussed.
Willis describes Haynes' homage to Sirk as "retrospectatorship" in terms of his adhering to the style of the great melodramatist through pastiche (literally frame-for-frame copying his opening scene), yet going even further by providing "false notes" that upset the popular image of the 50's familial unit (Frank embarrassing Cathy at the party, the complete disregard of the children). While I can appreciate the attention to detail and the extra steps Haynes takes to try and address these cultural issues that are still temporally relevant, the artificial container it comes within is a distraction from the real issue at hand.
Perhaps this seems contradictory to my praise of Williams earlier, but the "montage of memory" that creates a completely artificial world, as though we were in a dream-like trance, did not sit well. The canted angles to show the "off-ness" of the situation. The dissolves and fade-outs a recall of Classical Hollywood. It was almost plastic and thus allowed no actual emotional connection. Even Bernstein's soundtrack (the only saving grace with its simplicity) could not save the formalistic qualities of the film.
Another reason I couldn't connect with the film was because I was in no way connected with the protagonist, Cathy. It's as though we're supposed to assume as an audience that Cathy won't be progressive because she is a home caretaker in the 50's and are instantly supposed to change our minds when we see her support the NAACP and the friendship she develops with her African American gardener. Is she automatically progressive because of this? Not racist = good person / ahead of her time? Her life literally falls apart because her patriarchal world goes to pieces, but she can find a way to build herself up again because of her "progressiveness" in terms of race? The film is even self-reflexive about borrowing from a film that is self-reflexive in terms of utilizing race as a dramatic quality.
I think that though many of the issues addressed in Far From Heaven are still in existence today, the way in which they are presented -- using pastiche as a capsule -- simplify the issues. Yes, Haynes takes the extra step further than Sirk ever did, but it still falls flat in representation.
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