I can’t think of a film (non-documentary)
made in the last five years that was as pretentious as Todd Haynes’ I’m not There. (2007). It is the story of Bob Dylan, perhaps the American artist of the last fifty
years, told through seven separate narratives in which Dylan is played by seven
different actors, each representing a unique element of the Dylan mythology. Essentially, the film (and Haynes) makes the sub-textual
claim that Dylan is too complex to be covered in the traditional biopic format
that served Ray Charles and Johnny Cash so well; that he is somehow beyond
being defined by the art of motion pictures.
Then of course, the film attempts to define him by the same terms it
rejects, expecting the audience to applaud this effort. In short, I’m
not There. attempted to be the definitively non-definitive definitive Dylan
movie. Why the hell else would Haynes
have included a period in the film’s title?
Despite some solid performances, and positive
press generated by the death of costar Heath Ledger, Haynes 2007 effort
basically turned me off the director’s work.
I have yet to seek out his Velvet
Goldmine (1998) and have been forced to rethink my position on his well-executed,
but ultimately lackluster Far From Heaven
(2002). As such, I approached Haynes’
Safe (1995) with caution. I found much of the film’s first half hour to
be formulaic and dull, but I must confess that unlike the other work I’d seen
from the director, this movie took me in unexpected directions.
Safe
stars Julianne Moore as Carol White, a San Fernando Valley housewife of the 80s
who lives a life of banality. She has no
job, no hobbies, and no real reason to get out of bed in the morning. Essentially, she lives for her routine of
keeping up appearances. She is not
unhappy, nor unloving, but her life is empty.
The most excitement she expresses is over the delivery of a new couch…only
it’s not the one she ordered: “It can’t be black. Everything we have is teal.” Carol has little to get worked up over—she doesn’t
even sweat when she does aerobics—and little to fear. She can hardly walk around her yard after
dark without alerting the attention of a patrol car. She is as safe as could be in her closed
world.
But something does attack Carol;
something she can neither prevent nor understand. She seems to be suffering from unexplainable
ailments. At first they take the form of
headaches and ostensibly benign rashes, but these nuisances begin to wear her
down. She sees a doctor and is
pronounced perfectly healthy, though he does suggest she slow down on her dairy
intake. These early scenes drag into
near tedium as Haynes sets the stage for a payoff, but emotional outbursts are sparse
in this picture. I spent several minutes
waiting for what felt like an obligatory, and obviously cliché, spilling of one
of the glasses of milk Carol asks her maid to bring her, just thinking that
such a scene would break up the monotony.
Eventually escalation does occur, as
Carol begins to experience panic attacks and bloody noses. Though she’s convinced that she’s more than
physically exhausted, her doctor insists that she is perfectly healthy. She tries dietary changes to alleviate her symptoms,
but nothing seems to work. Eventually
she stumbles onto a self help group for those experiencing similar ailments,
and diagnoses herself as “chemically sensitive,” a condition resulting from
prolonged exposure to the compounded elements of the late twentieth century.
She takes the diagnosis seriously,
and begins carrying an oxygen mask with her almost everywhere she goes. When exposed to a pesticide, she has a minor
stroke. Convinced she needs treatment
outside of the city, she checks into a detox-style rehabilitation center in
rural New Mexico. Though her husband and
step son continue to not understand her condition they try to be supportive,
even though the center seems more like a cult than a place of healing.
What gives Safe its edge is the fact that Haynes wisely remains neutral toward
his subject. The sense of commentary on
materialism that drowns the picture’s early sequences begins to give way to the
question of the legitimacy of Carol’s illness.
Whether she experiences these discomforts out of a desire to feel
anything at all, or she is legitimately allergic to modernity is left up to the
viewer. Haynes gives his audience the
choice to decide for themselves, even avoiding several easy sucker punches at
the self help sector. Yes, Carol seems
to be in the midst of a cult by the film’s conclusion, but Haynes does not try
to persuade us into thinking that this is necessarily a bad thing. For Carol, the rehab center seems just right.
The
Village Voice* critic’s poll named Safe
as the best film of the 1990s. I
suspect that this was due in large part to the fact that this picture so well foreshadowed
the paranoia that accompanied the time period in which such end-of-decade polls
were being taken and published. Looking
back, I suspect the critics’ choice would be different, particularly as Haynes
covered much of the same material of the film’s early sequences, again with
Moore, in Far From Heaven. Still, I think Safe is a relevant piece of 1990s cultural assessment of both the
decade it seceded and the end of the twentieth century. The 1001 write up on the movie refers
to it as a horror film, and while I don’t think I was ever scared while
watching it (and even laughed a bit) I can’t think of what else I would label
it. Perhaps this is another aspect in
which Haynes ambiguity also serves this odd film.
Language:
English
Runtime:
119 Minutes
Grade:
3 Hats Off
*realizing
that this was the second review in a row in which I’ve referenced this
publication, I wanted to note that I am not on their payroll
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