Remembrance of FAR FROM HEAVEN from MAD MEN
Because of my current work, I miss MAD MEN on AMC ,but from the reviews I wanted the show when it came out on DVD. Now that I am almost finished this immensely entertaining and thought provoking show, I am brought back to the brilliance of FAR FROM HEAVEN and the look of the '50's, the anguish Kathy had as she sees the man she married turn out to be not the man she knew. I kept thinking of Betty and Don Draper and their supposedly perfect marriage, the children, the house in suburbia, and what a sham it all turned out to be. I wondered if others had these same feelings and could recall the beautiful Julianne Moore caught in a web of lies weaved by her husband, Dennis Quaid, who yearned not for a skirt, but for a pair of man's pants. As I look at MAD MEN and the false trappings of the Eisenhower years, the icon of the "perfect housewife", I keep thinking of Kathy in FAR FROM HEAVEN and the emptiness she felt in the demise of not only her marriage, but the beliefs she was lead to think were real, and instead turned to lies.
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I haven't seen Far From Heaven yet, but I am definitely intrigued to see similarities to Mad Men. What makes Betty and Don so fascinating is that they both entered a marriage for totally superficial reasons. Don wanted the "normal" life, the beautiful bride, the picket fences, because it was so drastic from his childhood and his abandoned identity. Betty too wanted the house, two cars, two kids, perfect husband, so she married a man she knows nothing about. Now they're starting to discover who they really are, and it might be that they were never right for each other in the first place.
I will be anxious to note your impressions of FAR FROM HEAVEN, and the comparison to MAD MEN. Thank you.
I saw FAR FROM HEAVEN, and still have mixed feelings about it, though from a set/costume design standpoint it was perfect. I couldn't buy into the secret taboo sexual identity plot line. Maybe I'd seen too many of those '50's soap operas.
I guess I just couldn't get into it because the tearjerkers on which it was based just didn't delve into that area (sexual identity). The crisis was always based on the cheating spouse, illegitimate baby, secret affair or alcoholism. I'm thinking of Written on the Wind, All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession. By the early 1960's those kind of 1950's soap operas had morphed into a different subset tearjerker of the younger set in Susan Slade, Palm Springs Weekend, Where the Boys Are, Parrish, etc, etc.
Michael, the first movie I remember about a repressed/closeted gay man was 1967's"Reflections in a Golden Eye" with Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, and the earlier 1959 Tennesse Williams' film "Suddenly Last Summer" with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor.
So, as vague as it was touched upon in "Suddenly Last Summer" (the never seen Sebastion character using Elizabeth Taylor as bait to lure men), and the confusingly so "Reflections", I guess it does illustrate that plotline of "Far From Heaven" wasn't so far out. I forgot about these two movies.
But you're right, the character Kathy does show the long-suffering wife to perfection, and Dennis Quaid was perfect. I can't remember the end, can you believe it?