In Todd Haynes’ film Safe, Julianne Moore plays a 1980s housewife doing her best to wear a face of normality as her world crumbles due to a mysterious illness. In Haynes’ Far From Heaven, Moore steps into the housewife role again. This time she is Cathy Whitaker, a prim and proper upper-class icon of the 1950s. The bright and colorful opening shots establish a typical idealized 1957, full of perfectly-manicured lawns, good-mannered kids and happy families. It’s not long before the cracks start to show in this delicate idyll, and Cathy realizes that her envied social standing is in danger of turning on her. Her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is distant, abusive and troubled by identity issues and alcoholism. Cathy finds a sympathetic ear in her black gardener Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), but ther interracial friendship ignites an explosion of hurtful rumors that damage the Whitaker family’s already rocky life beyond repair. The choices the Whitakers make, and how they deal with the consequences, challenges the standards of their fictional community, as well as the audience’s sanitized nostalgia for the Good Old Days. In both Safe and Far From Heaven, Haynes creates stylized versions of the past, where even the closest relationships fall apart as characters deviate from the accepted societal norm. His films surpass simple drama because the polarizing issues at their core are sadly still as relevant today.

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