Far From Heaven

Starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert…

Far From Heaven

Starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert

Directed by Todd Haynes

Those who watch a lot of old movies will probably get Todd Haynes’ new film from the moment the title hits the screen. The words “Far From Heaven” appear in screen-filling grandness, written in a style that belongs patently to the credit sequences of 1950s cinema. They set the tone for Haynes’ experiment – a film made entirely in the style of ’50s melodrama. The work of Douglas Sirk, director of “Imitation of Life,” is the template.

The audience is introduced to perfect ’50s Hartford, Conn., to the perfect family, the Whitakers and then to the prejudice and repression that infects them. The father, Frank (Dennis Quaid), comes home late and drinks an awful lot – he has a dark secret that could destroy his family. Mother Cathy (Julianne Moore), the community’s favorite homemaker, is later shunned by everyone she knows after she is seen publicly conversing with a black man, Raymond (Dennis Haysbert).

Haynes nails the ’50s style. The production looks the way the ’50s look in ’50s movies. The director seems to know exactly what Sirk would have done with the camera at every moment – the shot rises as emotional scenes come to a close, goes crooked during tense moments, etc. The score, by veteran Elmer Bernstein, who might very well have scored the film if it had actually been made in the ’50s, is appropriately exaggerated to match the emotions of the film.

Playing roles that easily could have fallen into shallow, “wink-wink” territory, the actors strike a graceful balance that permits substance where there could have been only style. The characters are stereotypical and the emotions overly theatrical, but, almost as much so as in Sirk’s films, the audience is still engaged and, in the end, affected.

Haynes takes the old form in a few directions it was never permitted to go. Though racial prejudice was often portrayed in the films that inspired this one, Haynes’ melodramatic portrayal of homosexuality is something new. It is his way of taking a new step with the old form. He’s not just emulating the way the old films addressed subjects such as racism, he’s showing how they would have dealt with something they never could; it is a success.

While casual moviegoers may struggle with the concept of “Far From Heaven,” cinephiles will likely embrace it. Haynes, adding this to his paranoid masterpiece “Safe” and his little-seen but impressive glam-rock spectacle “Velvet Goldmine,” is becoming an important and unpredictable new voice.