Curiously enough, the director who wields the greatest influence over Far From Heaven is really not so much the film’s director Todd Haynes as much as it is a filmmaker who is universally recognized as hitting his peak in the 1950’s: Douglas Sirk. At that time, Sirk’s films of the mid-50’s were not recognized as being his peak. In fact, such films as Magnificent Obsession, All that Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind were dismissed as lightweight glossy overproduced soap operas. It would take a few decades for Sirk’s vision to be fully realized for what it was. Not just time, but a more universal recognition and appreciation of irony. What appears on the surface to be an embrace of Eisenhower-era conformity and a full acceptance of mid-century American exceptionalism is, beneath the glossy surface, a corrosively ironic critique.
What is most amazing about Far From Heaven is just how much it looks like a Sirk film form his most fecund period. Grab a still from any single shot of the movie and compare it to one of Sirk’s movies of the fifties and it is difficult to determine which was shot when. The key to achieving this seamless timeless quality lies in the decision to not just consciously recreate the style and design of those films, but to use the same type of cinematic equipment. The combination of hardware like lenses and filters with set design and the intent to make a film made in the 21st century have that same visual sense as a film made in the 1950’s results in Far From Heaven being not too distant from All that Heaven Allows. But the key to matching style with content falls under the influence of Haynes rather than Sirk.
In his films, Sirk is working against the grain by introducing irony into what seems innocently sincere. Haynes does not possess the luxury of dealing with zeitgeist that is almost shockingly irony-free since he is working right along the edges of the turning point when sincerity was thrown under the bus and crushed almost to death by the Age of Irony. The film was released in 2002, that period right on the cusp of the full-scale adoption of irony becoming such a necessity that even the merest hint of sincerity created the potential for rejection. The film was released into theaters about six months after the series finale of the animated show Daria. Those six months effectively mark the death of sincerity and the coronation of irony as the defining tone of American entertainment. Far From Heaven foresees this complete alteration of the social landscape by daring to recreate not just the look of a Sirk film, but its surface sincerity. The only difference is that in 2002 Haynes knew with confidence that his audience would “get” the ironic undertones that Sirk could only patient wait for with his audience.
The directorial influence of Far From Heaven is thus the vision of two different directors working in two different eras under a hugely divergence in audience recognition of irony. And yet, there exists almost no difference between All that Heaven Allows and Far From Heaven in terms of presentation. In a way, the experience of viewing these two films back to back is not unlike watching a 1950’s educational short as produced and the rewatching it with a comedic commentary by the guys from Rifftrax pointing out the absurdity of its sincerity through postmodern ironic subversion. Except that Far From Heaven doesn’t aim for parody or even satire. Instead, it demands of its audience something much deeper and critically engaging: the recognition of the awareness of how the sincere belief in American exceptionalism was a total façade intended to distract from recognition of its myriad problems involving gender, sexual and racial discrimination.
