“We ladies are never what we appear, and every girl has her secrets.”
The context is one of the most excruciating social occasions ever conceived by the mind of man: a mid-century upper-middle-class white patriarchal cocktail party. Cathy’s closeted homosexual husband Frank is drunk because, well, what other purpose does a cocktail party serve, right? Upon Frank’s being “complimented” second-hand by virtue of being told how lucky he is to have a looker for a wife, he responds with what is assumed to be a deprecatory joke about how Cathy’s looks are all a cosmetic-induced magic trick. Being the dutiful little 1950’s wife, Cathy plays along. This is an example of the film as a whole: the sincerity on the surface belies the irony underneath.
“I know it's a sickness because it makes me feel - despicable, dirty.”
The “sickness” here has a name: homosexuality. Frank is, as mentioned, a closeted homosexual which, of course, was practically the only kind of homosexual there was in America in the fifties. Taking its cue from the glossy spectacle of the films of Douglas Sirk which revealed the ironic self-deception of American society in the Eisenhower era, Far From Heaven presents a surface portrait of mid-century American perfection which disguises the corrosive truth of the realty beneath. To all the world, Frank and Cathy have a perfect marriage. This façade stands precariously on the precipice of falling apart as the movie begins and the narrative is a trek from the precipice over the side of the cliff which follows the couple—Cathy, mostly—all the way down into the chasm.
“That was the day I stopped believing in the wild ardor of things. Perhaps in love, as well. That kind of love. The love in books and films. The love that tells us to abandon our lives and plans, all for one brief touch of Venus. So often we fail at that kind of love. The world just seems too fragile a place for it. And of every other kind, life remains full. Perhaps it's just we who are too fragile.”
The final reflective words of a woman who has finally landed with a thud in the darkness of that abyss. So far down—so far from a precarious perch that now looks a little something like heaven—has Cathy fallen that the ripping down of the façade of perfection has left her spiritually empty. A picture of the perfect family is no more real than idea other people get from judging by only what they see. The film is almost a remake Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows tailored for a generation that is no longer so easily dazzled by glossy façade which feeds their eagerness to believe lies. Sirk made his films for an audience that welcome the phony portrait of their own idealized sense of perfection. While maintaining that gloss, the subversion beneath works out in a way that reflects the newly adopted philosophy of Cathy. We all of us know better today.
