Far from Heaven

Dir. Todd Haynes. 2002, 107 mins. 35mm. With Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson. A magnificently mounted and beautifully acted film that both evokes and subverts the craftsmanship and artifice of Hollywood studio filmmaking, Far from Heaven was writer-director Todd Haynes’s most instantly critically acclaimed film, nominated for four Oscars and sweeping the New York Film Critics Circle awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Yet it offers so many exquisite layers of meaning that twenty years later, it still feels both slyly transgressive and emotionally satisfying. Both an homage to and an update of Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows, the movie stars a brilliant Moore in her most subtly heartbreaking performance as a 1950s Connecticut housewife coming to terms with her husband’s homosexuality and her own romantic feelings for her Black gardener, provoking the intolerance of her racist community. With Ed Lachman’s super-stylized cinematography and Mark Friedberg’s meticulous set design, Far from Heaven looks and feels like a cinematic dream. 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.