With his latest film, writer/director Todd Haynes ('Velvet Goldmine') reinterprets and revisits a great, almost forgotten Hollywood genre - the domestic melodrama. Far from Heaven is inspired by the films of John Stahl ('Leave Her To Heaven'), Magnificent Obsession', 'Imitation of Life',  and, more particularly, the films of Douglas Sirk.

Not unlike those classics of the genre, Haynes' new film explores multiple layers simultaneously.

"Creating a fifties-era melodrama today and playing it straight, smack in the midst Of
this pumped-up, adrenaline-crazed era, might seem a perplexing impulse," says Haynes. " Yet the strongest melodramas are those without apparent villains, where characters end up
hurting each other unwittingly, just by pursuing their desires. To impose upon the
seeming innocence of the 1950s themes as mutually volatile as race and sexuality it's to
reveal how volatile those subjects remain today - and how much our current climate of
complacent stability has in common with that bygone era."

As with many of the masterpieces of the genre, Far from Heaven, is set in a prosperous suburbia, a world of bright bourgeois satisfaction and Technicolor splendor that all but overpowers the lonely inner life of its protagonists. The small, whispered innuendoes and self-satisfied smugness of the community block the changes that Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) is undergoing.

"Maternal melodramas are a tradition that inspired this film and this style of filmmaking," comments Haynes. "They've been part of American film history since it began."

"We tried to approximate a whole look, a whole style, and a whole cinematic language that aren't familiar today. Styles of '50s filmmaking have certainly gone away: backlot Hollywood in Universal Pictures movies, for example, the experience of working in a studio system with seasoned technicians working in a factory of illusion-making that was honed and refined over the years."

"With Far from Heaven, the style and the content are inseparable - as they are in most of the films I respect, where you can't imagine the story being told any other way. The style reflects the emotional experience of the story. There's a distancing effect with the style we're exploring - but ultimately it's not my goal to distance."

"I wanted to have the emotional impact and the stylistic conventions ultimately work as one. 1 think that what happens in the best melodramas is that there is a sense in which you are observing it from afar and you're seeing what they're doing ... but you can't help getting drawn in emotionally at the same time. It's because these films are about subtle social dynamics, very large and very small things that don't really change. They're also about love and despair and disappointment and betrayal - the stuff we all experience. So you can't help but be sucked in - and that's my goal with Far from Heaven."

Haynes sought to recreate the perfect, pristine look of mid-centurv Hollywood studio films. The creative team studied the movies of the period and re- created the heightened, intensive perfection of those films' sets, costumes, color palettes, frame compositions, and lighting.

Haynes states, "While the look and style of those '50s melodramas are anything but realistic, there's something almost spookily accurate about the emotional truths of those films. They are hyperreal, that's why we call them melodramas. Because they are about the kinds of things that are close to our private, personal lives, like falling out of love with somebody."

Far from Heaven explores several social themes: racism, homosexuality, and the role of women in families.

In making a film set in the 1950s, Haynes notes he was very aware of the sense of superiority that we all feel about the '50s because in some ways the decade has been reduced to a series of cliches around suburban, conservative Americana. It's shocking to think that the same year Marilyn Monroe was at her peak, Joan Baez released her first album and was an instant sensation. Those two examples of femininity that we now put into such separate categories existed at the same time. So there are all kinds of contradictions to the idea that the '50s was just one thing. It's exciting to use some of those expectations as a way of disarming the audience a little bit for Far from Heaven."

The theme of maternal sacrifice is central to many of the greatest Hollywood melodramas, from King Vidor's STELLA DALLAS to Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE (1959). In Far from Heaven, the character of Cathy, played by Julianne Moore, shows how much women were forced to give up to sacrifice to their family, while the men ultimately move on in search of their happiness. Says Haynes, "Sadly, it's at the point where she gives it up, gives up her desires or hope for satisfaction, that she gains her voice."

He adds, "We're also still struggling with racism to an incredible degree. People are still
grappling with their sexuality, even in a world that offers positive alternatives all over the place.  Racial and sexual orientation are still ingrained as conflicts in our culture - they're still very pertinent."

Haynes also sought to explore the differences between parenting today and parenting then. He comments, "Certain aspects of contemporary culture underscore aspects of this particular period more than others - which is always the case when you're in any particular historical period looking back. In today's culture, there is a panic around any kind of crossing of certain lines or rules about how children should be treated or dealt with; children have become the central force of the family and many parents' lives.

"In addition to ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS, Max Ophuls' THE RECKLESS MOMENT [recently remade as THE DEEP END] is an influence on Far from Heaven. In the films of the '50s, children are part of the maternal jobs and responsibilities: the good mother is the one who keeps them clean and quiet and in their place. You also see this in beloved TV shows like FATHER KNOWS BEST, where it's the mother who is more strict and obsessed with cleanliness and manners and all that stuff. Yet you don't hate her; you don't think she's bad or have any resentment toward her. So it's not meant to be a big flaw in the character of Cathy.

"In many of Sirk's films, it's the children - older kids - who are often the most extreme spokespeople for the repressions of their culture. There's no sentimentality towards offspring in those films. It's a very interesting concept: maybe being the mother in an American household isn't this fully blessed existence. maybe the children aren't the perfect flowers of your life and the only things in the world."

Julianne Moore, with whom Todd Haynes first collaborated on SAFE, was his first choice for the role of Cathy, a woman who finds her entire life shattering. Moore recalls, "Todd sent me the script in the spring of 2000. He said, 'This is the movie that I've been working on and that I want you to do.' It was pretty much a final draft: with Todd, 1 find that everything that he wants is evident in the script."

"In this film, there are issues of bigotry and prejudice, but this is ultimately Todd's most feminist movie," says Moore. "His point is that here might be sexual differences and cultural differences and racial differences, but the first and most important difference is determined at birth - whether you're a boy or a girl. Everything in Cathy's life is defined by her very femaleness. As much as the men in the film are going through all these things, they're the ones who manage to go on. Cathy is the one left behind, because she is female." Moore, like Haynes, believes that the story in the film is not dated and is completely relevant to our modern lives. She explains, "Although people are kind of loath to say it, 1 think that there is a way we publicly live our lives. In Far from Heaven, you see people being forced into certain social situations and having to behave in a particular way because of the place they're in and the people they're speaking to. But then there are the private moments, where they reveal other things. As an actor, it's a wonderful thing to do, to be able to do both the public and the private in the same film."

Todd Haynes notes, "Far from Heaven does deviate from the thematic possibilities afforded films in the '50s in its depiction of homosexuality. Before the 1960s, homosexuality could only be alluded to in American film by way of comically flamboyant or ridiculous supporting characters or cameos. So, homosexuality, while behind-the-scenes, was indeed evident in the making of the films - as it was, arguably, in the aesthetics of many directors of 'women's films,' like George Cukor and Vincente Mlilnelli. While thematically restricted, a gay or 'feminine' aesthetic was free to pervade the profuse visual style of those films: the clothes, the colors, the lavish decor. Far from Heaven may just be bringing into the level of content what was always there, bristling beneath the surface."

In Far from Heaven, Cathy's husband Frank, played by Dennis Quald, is forced to finally admit to his homosexuality when his wife discovers his feelings. Haynes comments, "At the time, homosexuality was considered an illness. Even in the most civil and well-educated circles, that was considered the tolerant way of looking at the condition. Yet when I did research on homosexuality and its treatment at that particular time, I was surprised. You think of the '50s, you assume shock treatment and all of these horrific, panicky things because we think of the '50s as so patently repressive. In fact, there were breakthroughs in the late '40s and in some writings, doctors were saying that this was not a sickness and that you really can't change it. So it was actually more progressive than I thought."

The casting of actor Dennis Quaid, who throughout his career has so effortlessly embodied comfortable masculinity on-screen, enhances the role of Frank, the suburban "Pop" and husband who can no longer hide the truth of his homosexuality from himself or his wife. Quaid notes, "I'd seen a couple of Todd's movies and found him to be an artist, with a very interesting point of view about life. When I read the script, my first impression was that it would be good for me to play this character because I hadn't done a role like this before ~ and had never seen this character situation in a film. On the exterior, it looks like Frank has the perfect life: he has a wife and two kids and he's a top sales executive for Magnatech TV. But he's very troubled and shamed by his secret life."

"What I appreciated about Todd's writing and direction is that it would have been very easy to parody these people and have a laugh, but he doesn't: there is an emotional integrity to it. It's set in the '50s, a time when people swept things under the carpet; behind those neat rose palaces that people lived in, all kinds of drama went on that we never knew about. Things are more open these days, but people still have the same emotions and feelings."

Haynes says, "Dennis and I talked after he'd read the script. While we spoke about the style being inseparable from the content, one of the things that drew him to the film was the fact that he'd never played a character like this before: a gay man, and one so conflicted. He understood the conflict that Frank is going through not just as an actor but as a person, because he said that he's had some very close friends for whom this has been the case."

Far from Heaven also explores the relationship between blacks and whites in 1950s suburbia. Dennis Haysbert plays Raymond, the widower gardener to whom Cathy is drawn. The burgeoning relationship between Cathy and Raymond highlights the taboo that was interracial dating and marriage in the '50s, in both the white and the black communities. Like '50s Hollywood melodramas, Far from Heaven is set primarily in the wealthy, white world. Haynes notes that "there is the whole world of black Hartford that we do not see. We see it all through the little perfectly white happy family keyhole that is Cathy Whitaker's point of view.

Dennis Haysbert comments, "What I would hope for is that when people watch Far from Heaven, they'll look back over their lives and see opportunities they've missed and say, 'I'm never going to let this happen again. The next time I find love, no matter who it is, no matter what color or size or religion or whatever, I'm going to go for it.' If someone can walk out of the theater with that in mind, then we will have succeeded."

Dennis Quaid says, " I hope people see themselves when they see Far from Heaven, and can relate to it." Julianne Moore concurs, stating, " I hope that audiences get caught up in Far from Heaven emotionally."

When asked how he hopes audiences will respond to the film, Todd Haynes answers, "With tears, tears of recognition - where the heightened stylistic experience only clarifies how much, in this all-too-human story, we recognize ourselves."

Douglas Sirk (1900-1987) was, as Todd Haynes recounts, "a German-born intellectual who knew Brecht, and worked in European theater M the '20s and '30s. He was a progressive radical by the standards of Nazi Germany. His first wife, who he divorced, got very closely aligned to the Nazi party. His second wife was a Jewish woman, so they fled to America. "In Hollywood, in the 1950s at Universal Studios, he was hired to make these screen versions of Ladies Home Journal sort of stories. The films he made have become well-known, cherished, and later studied in the 'auteur' traditions. They are mostly known for their vivid use of Technicolor, but their beautiful lighting also boldly infuses 'film noir' darks and shadows. The films were stories of women in domestic settings that were also about the repressive nature of American bourgeois culture."