As a showpiece for Moore, she’s astonishing (Haynes and Moore would reunite for his Douglas Sirk-inspired Far From Heaven, another career capstone for both) as Carol, crystallizing the creepy vignette of blissed-out bourgeoisie during the Me Decade.Ĭarol, clad in austere white during the first act of the film (not only to match her surname but also her blankness), soon suffers choking sensations, coughing fits, and cryptic nosebleeds until one day, at the dry cleaners, she collapses. A controversial malady, MCS is thought to be set off by chemicals found in commonplace household products, dubbed “the Twentieth-Century Disease” it’s a great metaphor for Haynes to mess with.Īnd he does just that, with an at times Kubrickian sense of spacial dynamics, occasionally throwing back to 70s paranoia thrillers (think the Conversation, Marathon Man, and the Parallax View), and evidence of an Antonioni-like woman in distress vibe (Il Deserto Rosso specifically), yet still retaining his own inventive modes and manipulations.Ĭaustic handling of decor, location, and characterization makes Safe an assured feat of strength on so many levels. This is not the horror of monsters run amok but of ennui, alienation, and psychosomatic worry.Ĭarol, increasingly frazzled over commonplace occurrence, such as the delivery of new furniture to her Stepford-esque abode, wigs out with the non-specific illness known as MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity). The anxiety in the antiseptic routines of Carol’s day-to-day life, her disconnect with her family, her inability to function, therein lies the horror that Haynes’ film luxuriates in. The effect is to make the movie’s environment quietly menacing.” Air conditioning, perhaps, or electrical motors, or idling engines, sending gases and waste products into the air. This is not an audio flaw but a subtle effect: It suggests that malevolent machinery of some sort is always at work somewhere nearby. “You don’t always notice it, but during a lot of the scenes in Safe there’s a low-level hum on the soundtrack. She shops, and gossips, and has hair appointments, and her comfortable existence crashes down bit by bit. She has lifeless sex with her addled husband (Xander Berkeley). Carol leads a humdrum life in a sober suburban façade that slowly starts to languish around her in an eerie and oblique manner that reaps maximum effect from the illusory manipulation of sound and image. Safe stars the luminous Julianne Moore, in her first starring role, as Carol White, a So Cal housewife in the year 1987. His sophomore film (following his impressive debut from 1991, Poison, and a string of exceptional short films), Safe is a masterpiece of existential catastrophe and coolly detached uncertainty that also serves as one of the best American films of the nineties. Overall, SAFE presents the interesting point of view of inner emptiness, but caution should be exercised in its New Age worldviews where “you can create your own safe world.The oft antagonistic American indie filmmaker Todd Haynes first forced my attention with his 1995 revisionist art house horror film Safe, and I’ve been a supporter of his ever since. SAFE has one sexual scene, two implied sexual situations and two profanities. However, just as Carol’s troubled spirit finds solace in the Wrenwood retreat, the film fades from its technical brilliance to a more mundane end. Writer and director Todd Haynes uses excellent lighting, long still shots and poignant silences to tell his story of a woman that is searching for meaning and identity. The film fuses Carol’s breakdown into a conclusion that provides no real answers to the questions the story poses. Finally, she checks herself into the New Age Wrenwood retreat. Her calculated responses gradually give way to mysterious physical symptoms such as seizures, nose bleeds and breathlessness - explaining them all away as environmental illness – a diminishing tolerance to everyday chemicals. She responds to everything almost automatically. Carol’s life seems perfect in its materialistic splendor, but Carol seems increasingly disconnected. SAFE explores the fragility of the human spirit, weaving its story around its waning heroine, Carol, played by Julianne Moore.
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