In "Safe," on the other hand, the alienation is spread out across all the characters (I love Carol's husband, the confused deadbeat) and in both situations -- the Valley and the retreat. So it's not just about "soulless suburbia," the Valley, being a housewife, etc. (although that's obviously part of it, and the part that hits you the hardest for 2/3 of the movie) -- it's also got that really excellent final third, which people in this thread have discussed really well.
I like how even the salesman/founder of the retreat ("I look out there and I see... people learning to live again!" clapclapclap), who sets your sleaze alarm off right away, and who seems fairly phony in his one-on-one interaction with Carol, doesn't seem totally, unambiguously phony. it's a great thing how the viewer's natural cynicism toward the retreat, and the people there, is sort of short-circuited by how it's no more or less weird than the rest of the movie; and how Carol's fate may heartbreaking (depending on how you choose to "read" the end of the movie), but how she also hasn't necessarily been a "victim" of anybody -- even though she's inarticulate, and so not-in-control of her environment that she has to totally surrender control to others.
― Sam J. (samjeff), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 02:47 (twenty years ago) link
― Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 03:07 (twenty years ago) link
― Enrique (Enrique), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 09:14 (twenty years ago) link
And I prefer Rosemary's Baby (despite the loony devil scene which spoils it).
― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 09:27 (twenty years ago) link
anyway lots of good things to say on this thread. i agree with sam j. and douglas.
but i also think the v.v. poll thing isn't an accident...this film represents a kind of mainstreaming (or at least art-house prominence) of certain strains of academic thought which are quite talked-about in the milieu that the v.v. epitomizes. so it makes sense that it should be the "best film of the '90s" in that context. i think haynes is brilliant at realizing certain ideas in *visual* terms. and anyway he's a natural, i think: the cutaway to the fox in the brush is marvelously timed for maximum chilling effect, even as its meaning is charged through with total ambiguity.
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 16:11 (twenty years ago) link
and i believe sam j's story has some relevance, about haynes comments re: environmental concerns. "safe" is set in los angeles and feels in particular an austere commetary on the ecological dangers of living here: the freeways, the polluted and noxious atmosphere, the crowded, lawnless housing communities, the artificial decor of the air-brushed interiors, the constant emphasis on appearance and grooming. yet i don't think the film just simplistically blames the external environment without reversing the question a bit: for all the time she worried about the appearance of her home as she went about altering the furniture, etc, it was not until the psychiatrist asked her "what is the problem w/ you?" that she began to confront herself as perhaps being the source of the disease, and started looking at it as an internal thing
the (possible, or one in a series- we wouldn't know) culmination of that self-confrontation was the most chilling moment in the very film: the very end, when she looks straight into the camera and says "i love you." we don't know if she really means it, or if its just a stark reminder of how she'll never really mean it, but it's so significant because it could just be the first moment in her life that she truly feels "safe" - and alone with herself. i know i'm contradicting my first post re: the ending now, but this thread has suceeded in making my mind go back and forth, even more than the images of the film did =)
― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:15 (twenty years ago) link
― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:29 (twenty years ago) link
It bothers me that "allergic to modern life" became kind of a tagline/selling point for Safe, because it seems so pat and trite when isolated like that -- like the sort of thing you'd happen to see on a poster for, say, a new-age retreat. It worked well as one of the possible explanations (on a micro-level) for her mysterious illness, but as a selling point the phrase distracts from the scary horror of Carol's situation (suddenly getting very sick and feeling powerless to stop it) and actually provides a diagnosis for something that needs to remain open-ended in order for the movie to work.
― Annouschka Magnatech (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:39 (twenty years ago) link
for some reason, although it's a brief scene, i always remember when carol and her husband and son are having dinner and the son is, i think, talking about guns and so on, and the husband half-heartedly chastises him. it's a tiny moment but it seems to open up the story a bit, suggest a malady that goes beyond just carol.
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:43 (twenty years ago) link
they were having dinner and son was doing a report on the violence in la and wqas pretty gory in his details, and carol said she thinks its too graphic
― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:45 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:50 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:52 (twenty years ago) link
I'm not faulting you... it's the marketing strategy I take issue with.
― Annouschka Magnatech (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:53 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 17:57 (twenty years ago) link
contrast with the black woman carol meets at the new age resort, the first one to really be friendly to her and show her around. but i suppose he had to do that, put a visible black character at the retreat, or else he would've been making a comment on the "illness" and race without meaning to
― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 18:02 (twenty years ago) link
i'm still not decided on the usefulness of having these characters enact certain dated stereotypes.... certainly they meet different ends in haynes's film than in sirk's....
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 18:07 (twenty years ago) link
in haynes's film, the characters are defeated by the rules, unable to transcend them. in this sense the film can be seen simply as a commentary on the impossibility of transcendence--is that obvious and facile and redundant in the cynicism-sated 21st century, or is it a point that needs making again?
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 18:11 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 18:13 (twenty years ago) link
re: transcendece and the ending, even though i haven't seen that sirk original, i think it had more to do w/ the last century than this one, since maybe haynes was commenting instead on how in the less benevolent universe behind sirk's stylized facades was an unhappily-ever-after world where desires didn't really come true (and homosexuality was more than always implied, etc) -> that the 20th century was a bit more of an empty, unrealized dream than we'd depicted at the time/we'd like to think
― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 18:29 (twenty years ago) link
― Sean (Sean), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 18:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Vic (Vic), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 19:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Sam J. (samjeff), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 20:28 (twenty years ago) link
― Sam J. (samjeff), Wednesday, 8 October 2003 20:31 (twenty years ago) link
― Chris P (Chris P), Thursday, 9 October 2003 02:52 (twenty years ago) link
― Enrique (Enrique), Thursday, 9 October 2003 07:24 (twenty years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 9 October 2003 13:18 (twenty years ago) link
― gygax! (gygax!), Monday, 27 September 2004 15:49 (nineteen years ago) link
― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 22:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― noise dude, you're stepping on my mystique (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 22:58 (eighteen years ago) link
Creating a film commenting on Sirk, be it an homage or a pastiche, is an exercise in fetishism.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:10 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:21 (eighteen years ago) link
― jed_ (jed), Tuesday, 26 July 2005 23:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 04:41 (eighteen years ago) link
as i noted on the sirk thread, i think this is wrong. the production code was not set up to police bourgeois ideology. and anyway (this is my main point) i'm not sure sirk intended anything so damning/withering/'subversive' as some of his latterday fans claim. i don't think sirk's own intentions and the prevailing attitudes in hollywood were at odds. i think he had like-minded producers and screenwriters much (not all) of the time. i think the films are more confused and contradictory and emphathetic than certain post-fassbinder characterizations allow.
i think we're throwing the word 'brechtian' around without much care. defamiliarization is what art does--that idea doesn't begin or end with brecht. sirk was ambivalent abour brecht and i really don't see his films as employing 'brechtian' devices in any sense, unless you stretch the definition of 'brechtian' to the point where it becomes banal, no longer useful.
did i mention i love sirk's movies? because i do.
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 05:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 05:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 05:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Eric H. (Eric H.), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 05:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 05:16 (eighteen years ago) link
That's all true (what Sirk wants us to think at the end of All That Heaven Allows is rather a muddle) but it doesn't discount the fact that his films needed (thrived?) under the Production Code. You couldn't make a Douglas Sirk film today.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 11:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 17:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Wednesday, 27 July 2005 18:13 (eighteen years ago) link
I saw Safe for the third time tonight, and actually liked it considerably more than previously. (Not "best film of the '90s"-level, though.) No idea whether my getting seriously ill in the interim accounts for any of that.
Haynes did a Q&A after and he doesn't remotely seem to "hold the characters in contempt," not Carol at least. He admits that keeping her remote to some degree was a strategy.
― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 21 November 2015 04:24 (eight years ago) link
I saw Safe for the third time tonight, and actually liked it considerably more than previously. (Not "best film of the '90s"-level, though.)
I had the same reaction when I watched the beautiful Criterion Blu-ray.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 21 November 2015 12:12 (eight years ago) link
amateurist OTM upthread about Sirk. I still regard FFH with suspicion though.
I watch Carol on Tuesday.
― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 21 November 2015 12:17 (eight years ago) link
i'm sick and feeling rundown and dreading a busy couple of weeks coming up so i put this on right after waking up from a nap. hadn't seen it in 9 or 10 years. such a brilliant, hypnotic, enveloping movie- i get sick a lot (tho nothing as wild as the '20th century allergy' in the movie or something like morgellons - i just have a weak immune system and get colds and flus and viruses and infections a lot)- and this movie really captures the alienation and isolation and frustration of being around healthy people while you're sick, especially if it's psychosomatic. like it becomes a rain on their parade, or your illness a cry for attention, or obviously weakness. the sound design in the first half is stunning, and haynes nails that repulsive pastel mid/late 80s aesthetic, and tho i dont find the suburban ennui commentary very interesting atm it's done very well here.
this would make a great double feature with synecdoche, new york. i saw that at the end of 2008 so i must've seen safe earlier that year, because i didn't realize peter friedman is in both (the main wrenwood guy in safe, the first doctor in synecdoche, the one that stitches caden's head and gets freaked out that caden mishears him say 'ophthalmologist' as 'neurologist'). also noticed dean norris (hank on breaking bad) plays one of the movers early in the movie.
this and carol are neck and neck for my favorite haynes movies. absolutely one of our greatest living directors, at least in america.
― flappy bird, Monday, 18 December 2017 01:57 (six years ago) link
classic movie
― In a slipshod style (Ross), Monday, 18 December 2017 02:01 (six years ago) link
This is the best movie about AIDS, maybe the only AIDS movie with any wit.
As a Sirk pastiche, infinitely better than Far From Heaven, the pink/grey/turquoise suburban palette, the romantic yet realist recasting of Sirk's passive housewife-with-help heroine in the first act. As a queering of Sirk, far more productive than Fassbinder/Water's campness. The tragedy of domestic containment and its proximity to the tabloid/daytime vehicles of hysteria and AIDS panic. This stifling/prurient environment is v palpable in the first part of the film. V foucauldian.
Disease as "Identity," is the key observation of the film I think, and very prescient in understanding the way narratives around AIDS activism were moving in the mid-'90s.
What the film seems to understand very lucidly is the strand of individualism that characterised many of the more radical activist positions (within act-up etc) of the day. For instance, the way the film lampoons the current of embracing new-agey/alternative medical approaches by people with aids at that time, both a reaction of blind panic to something that was, pre-antiretrovirals, still without a cure, but also an attempt to remake the relationship between medicine and subject. And I think the somewhat ambiguous legacy of aids activism in shaping biomedical discourses and welfare discourses ever since, seems, well not addressed by this film, but certainly glimpsed and teasingly played out to an impressive degree.
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 18:45 (six years ago) link
julianne moore is a much better jane wyman here than in far from heaven, which is blunt and fundamentally pointless I think. Only Mildred Pierce and Carol are close for me. I could never be arsed watching velvet goldmine though. I can't bear bowie or iggy pop or any of that
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 18:47 (six years ago) link
his new one was pretty good, if slight. Safe and Carol are his masterpieces. although i should watch I'm Not There again
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 19 December 2017 18:54 (six years ago) link
plax, you know i love you, but FFH is both blunt and pointed.
I don't much care for glam but enjoyed Velvet Goldmine as a scandal sheet/research paper.
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:06 (six years ago) link
yeah, its a good film, its nowhere near as good as safe. also, safe is the only one that seems to have an entirely original look, so many of his other films aspire to a pastiche of post-war technicolor, but safe finds a pictorial equivalent that is blandly "contemporary" instead of revelling in period which is comparatively dull imo
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:12 (six years ago) link
i do think safe is his only "great" film
― plax (ico), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:17 (six years ago) link
d.p. for Safe seems to have virtually disappeared
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Nepomniaschy
― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:20 (six years ago) link
I'd accept Safe as his greatest film, if only to sidestep any more conversation about Far From Heaven and Carol (the latter of which I still liked).
― Fred Klinkenberg (Eric H.), Tuesday, 19 December 2017 19:35 (six years ago) link