Cast:
Julianne Moore (Carol White), Peter Friedman (Peter Dunning), Xander Berkeley (Greg White), James LeGros (Chris), Martha Velez (Fulvia), Susan Norman (Linda), Kate McGregor-Stewart (Claire), Mary Carver (Nell), Steven Gilborn (Dr. Hubbard), and Peter Crombie (Dr. Reynolds) Written and Directed by Todd Haynes.
Review:
"There’s a history of inexplicable illnesses, that established medicine can’t confirm as absolutely physiological, that have affected women. I think they are diseases of identity that force you to see that identity is a fragile and basically an imaginary construct that we pretend to carry around. The more unexamined it is, the more vulnerable you are."
Admittedly, it took a few years to get to a director who actually started his career with a movie involving Barbie dolls. Born in Los Angeles, Todd Haynes studied art and semiotics at Brown University and yet had been influenced by his high school teacher, who taught him a lesson about reality "can't be a criterion of judging the success or failure of a film or its effect on you". Haynes made his first short film in 1978 but it was his work on a short in 1987 while studying at Bard College that garnered considerable attention in more ways than one: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987) was a chronicle (43 minutes) of the life of the pop singer but with Barbie dolls as actors (with, well, one being chipped away gradually to reflect anorexia) to make for an "experimental film" to go along with archive and stop motion footage that had music from The Carpenters...which generated controversy from Richard Carpenter because the music was not licensed for the film. The result is that one can only see the film in bootleg form. Haynes' feature debut with the sci-fi drama horror movie Poison (1991) had its own brand of scrutiny, because its partial funding by the National Endowment of the Arts stoked controversy because of certain moments in the film ("explicit porno" is an actual phrase used by the babies who complained at the time). Haynes wrote the script for Safe fairly quickly after Poison but it took time to raise money ($1 million) for the film, which among other inspirations, found interest in "environmental illness". In over three decades, Haynes has directed eleven films (and one TV miniseries), which has included such movies as Far from Heaven (2002), Carol (2015), and his most recent movie, May December (2023).
It is interesting to hear "The Yellow Wallpaper" mentioned. As one might know from say, high school reading, that short story was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. That's the short story where a husband imposes a "rest cure" to his wife because she is afflicted with something after giving birth (okay, the disease in that story is basically what people know now as postpartum depression but stay with me), with Gilman being influenced by her own experiences of having been in a "rest cure" Think how that woman is gradually revealed to, well, have various descriptions of the wallpaper of the room that basically imprisons her. Now think about a movie that took inspiration from Louise Hay's self-help books that once had a quote saying that "almost anything can be healed" if one is willing to do the mental work for a narrative (set in 1987, at the height of a certain disease that obviously led to plenty of questions about therapy and recovery treatments, gay person or not) that involves a married woman with a family that finds something has afflicted her. The film starts in a place where one really sees the bare minimum of nature and manages to burrow further in that basically serves as facsimile of the conventional movie. It strikes to the core with a lead character that Haynes once described as having "the most vulnerable part of identity, the most uncertain and fragile part of myself." Time has seemingly made the movie seem even more prescient when it comes to that weird thing that arises in modern society when it comes to what "safe" really is in a land of hollow people that repress themselves (this especially leans politically, where I am reminded of how many people seem to believe things were just better in the old pictures/movies they seem to revere as gospel). Whether it involves psychotherapy, or New-Age mumbo jumbo, people just use something to strike at being "alone". Moore pretty much plays the role with a weightless type of quality in voice and approach that basically dominates the movie in a way that is beautifully horrific, as if she was a ripped wallpaper trying to get back to some sort of wall. Her vulnerability at the uncertain grasp that comes with identity and community is one that leaves you at a curious distance that has us examine ourselves for what we think about when it comes to the cycle of illness and what we think about in "recovery" through the lens of burden or strength. We see the sick, but do we actually hear them? Whether by circumstances of their own control or through the cruel nature of the unknown, the world we live in makes for a very strange process to see people and communities. It's interesting to see the contrast between her interactions with Berkeley (totally staid for the hollow-men, as one sees from the sex scene from above) as compared to Friedman and his ideal persona of feel-goodness. It is a slow burn of unsettling strangeness that leaves one at the very least unsettled at what has been sprung on them for its climax in terms of defining love in the eyes of oneself. In the end, we all yearn to be "safe" from something, where we wrap ourselves in a bubble and just believe in that decision in the face of all things. Whether taken as melodrama or horror, what we have here is a well-done film in the art of isolation and the delusions that come with misplaced beliefs and burdens that all come to roost at some point in our very lives.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Sunday night: be ready and Go Bills.
No comments:
Post a Comment