From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The 1950s Doldrums-“Far From Heaven”-A Film Review

DVD Review

Far From Heaven, Julie Moore, Dennis Quaid, Focus Features, 2002

… she awoke with a start around two in the morning, with a realization that he, her husband and father of her two young elementary school-aged children, was for the fourth night running once again not home from work, from that damn project that his boss, his damn boss (although she would not, properly lady-like raised, properly educated at Sarah Lawrence, Class of 1948, to be the perfect mate for her up and coming man and mother to his adoring children, utter those damns in public, well, at least not outside the friendly confines of her Ladies’ Club luncheons). Somewhere deep in her restless sleep she sensed something was wrong, not some something articulable, not something she could present him with, but something gnawing at her.

She immediately ran through the list of possible wrongs and came up with only one conclusion-he was with another woman. She had failed, failed miserable to be that help mate, to be that confidant, to be that worthy homemaker that she read about in those women’s magazines she picked up occasionally from the check-out counter at the supermarket. She promised herself to do better, to read the articles more carefully, and to, carefully, ask her best friend Bev who had been through it all with her Ben, what to do. Bev said surprise him some night at work with a special dinner. She did.

Yes, he was having an affair, an affair with a man. He was doing an act which dare not speak its name. Her husband was nothing but a damn homo and she would say that in public, very loud in public if he didn’t stop, stop being, what was it the girls said at that art show they attended as that fairy art critic came in the door, oh yes, “light on his feet.” A damn homosexual, a damn queer like those guys she would see in New York in the Village when she went into the city to shop. She wished now, wished to high heaven, that he was having an affair with a woman. Damn.

And he, her husband he, all confused, all too much work, too much alcohol, too much hidden rage, too much all getting ahead in the rat race 1950s world, raising up that ancient itch, long suppressed. Long suppressed since college, New York University Class of 1947, maybe a little after when he had that affair with sweet Raymond, the funny abstract artist, who all the girls (if they only knew) and boys too (boys who knew) were crazy over, could not stop himself, could not stop partaking of the crime, the crime in his eyes, of the partaking of the act that dare not speak its name. Jesus, that was just above being negro in the contempt scale, his own self-contempt as well as that of his neighbors. Looking back he remembered that first time, that first time with his boyhood friend, Eddy, and how they explored each other on that Boy Scout camping trip when they were tent-mates. And how soon after Eddy“grew out” of his taste and went with girls, a million girls as if to mock him, Eddy, beloved Eddy, who later would fall in frozen Inchon.

He had tried, tried to be normal, tried to fit in the leafy suburban ranch house big lawn country club life, tried to be a good if distracted father, tried to bring home the bacon, really tried with her too, tried in bed (always with a few drinks in him and a picture of some pretty boy flame encountered on the streets in his head). But it was no good, no good at all when the itch came back. He was queer, and only queer love would make him whole in that red scare cold war good night. And so he left, left her, left the kids, left the snide leaf cocktail Saturday night country club dance life and went to search of himself, and who he was.

In the end, after her damn discovery and subsequent, divorce, she depended on the kindness of strangers to see her through. No just any ladies club kindness, all surface and glitter, but manly kindnesses, kindnesses out of mother Africa like the circumstances needed some primordial bond that held all humankind together from a son of Africa. A son of Africa displaced on American shores, on leafy suburban country club life streets. A“talented tenth” man, a “new negro,” not some frosty negro, some Harlem pimp daddy all flash clothes and pink Cadillac, a girl, some white as snow, on every arm, or some tom fetch it from hunger, yes sir, right away sir , throw the blur blackface a quarter, or a bone, negro but negro devoured by black, and proud. But come 1950s leafy northern suburb, come we shall overcome southern chants, come stand in the doorway to block progress backed by surly white mobs, come we want in at the master’s table, or not, those, what did the poet call them, those negro streets and that leafy lawn could not mesh, not mesh then, and maybe not mesh too smoothly now.

… and hence this film.