Far From Heaven 2002

Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News: This imitation of life comes tantalizingly close to greatness, then settles for being smart without much heart. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: What Moore does on-screen here is absolutely beguiling. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Haynes' greatest accomplishment, beyond his impeccable craftsmanship and his connection with his actors, is in the way he respects the facade while tearing it away. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Deftly navigates the line between high art and mainstream entertainment. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: This film is a triumph of art direction and acting, with Moore, Quaid and Haysbert giving performances that feel authentic to the time even as they explore subjects and feelings that were at best implied in movies of that period. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: There's an incongruous but ravishing beauty in Far From Heaven, and in its three excellent central performances, that counteracts the seeming kitschiness of the story. Read more

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: The film's three leads are extraordinary, but what Moore does with her role is so beyond the parameters of what we call great acting that it nearly defies categorization. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Sirk would be proud. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: The deep, dark sadness of Haynes' movie casts a beautiful, powerful spell. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Haynes' loving homage to the Technicolor female-driven melodramas of the 1950s looks and feels so authentic, it will make you forget you are watching a new movie. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A ravishingly beautiful film. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Quaid makes a decent man's anguish richly palpable. Moore makes us feel hidden frenzy with a cool and ultimately heartbreaking grace. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Perhaps the year's most daring and fully realized movie. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Well worth seeing for its visual approximation of the Douglas Sirk-Ross Hunter 'women's pictures' of the 50's. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Every element in Far From Heaven harmonizes, in the kind of colossal achievement that revives my faith in movies and keeps me coming back for more. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The actors move about this elaborate movie museum in a modified dream state, as if living in the present while rooted in the past. But the strategy doesn't work. It's an imitation of lifelessness. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: By surrounding us with hyper-artificiality, Haynes makes us see familiar issues, like racism and homophobia, in a fresh way. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: Todd Haynes has crafted a feature-length homage to Sirk that succeeds both on its own terms and as the Sirk film that could never have been made in his own lifetime. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Though less obviously a tour de force than many flashier recent art films, such as Alexander Sokurov's one-take feature Russian Ark, it's no less impressive as a technical achievement. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: Well-written, nicely acted and beautifully shot and scored, the film works on several levels, openly questioning social mores while ensnaring the audience with its emotional pull. Read more

Steven Rosen, Denver Post: It's a film that's loving toward all concerned, even when they cause each other pain. And it is overwhelmingly, refreshingly sincere even while being revisionist. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Far From Heaven is a dazzling conceptual feat, but more than that, it's a work of enthralling drama. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Hits your heart, tickles your head and gives a little extra bonus to those of us who salivate over cinematography and set design. Read more

Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic: We are left wondering why, in any case, an imitation Sirk was needed, what appetite or interest it might fill. Even with its latter-day (modified) frankness, Far From Heaven is only thin glamour that lacks a tacit wry base. Read more

John Anderson, Newsday: Its core is a nugget of emotional truth and longing that's irresistible, and inextricably tied to a power so purely cinematic you wonder why so many other directors even bother. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: It may be a movie about movies, but the artifice doesn't contradict the movie's plangent emotional realism. Moore's stunning, subtle performance as a woman trapped in the conventions of her time encapsulates the film's brave, double-edged beauty. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: With tact and care, the movie digs into all the subjects that lay concealed below the surface when Max Ophuls and Douglas Sirk were filming their own melodramas in the nineteen-fifties. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Achieves the same sentimentality as the Sirk films, and in much the same way. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Haynes doesn't simply take a Norman Rockwell setting and release the hounds, either. He deals with these issues directly, but gently, as if his and Sirk's audiences were the same. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It rediscovers the aching, desiring humanity in a genre -- and a period -- too often subjected to easy parody or ironic appropriation. In a word, it's divine. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Haynes' movie, a sumptuously autumnal tale of grand passion brewed in a suffocating climate of repression and desire, is also an unabashedly loving, slyly subversive homage to the maternal melodramas of that era. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: A powerful and telling story that examines forbidden love, racial tension, and other issues that are as valid today as they were in the 1950s. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Because the film deliberately lacks irony, it has a genuine dramatic impact; it plays like a powerful 1957 drama we've somehow never seen before. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Haynes makes you drunk on movies again, on raw emotion delivered without the cushion of irony. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: A movie for hardcore film geeks and regular folk alike, a stunning, and stunningly improbable, fusion of postmodern pastiche and old-school Hollywood melodrama. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: If it's ultimately a failure -- and I think it is -- it's still worth seeing, because it's the most ambitious and magnificent failure in recent memory. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: It's so intimate, accessible, and passionate that it makes every other current movie seem anemic. It makes even Sirk seem anemic. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Haynes is interested in exploring deeper issues than a little country-club gossip. And he makes sure that the pretty pictures don't lead us to forget that. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Moore, who has a particular genius for communicating compassionate, if not fully conscious characters, makes the pathos believable. Read more

Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star: Pulls you in on the strength of its pathos while delighting you with the retrofit boldness of its technique and conventions. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Exultant in both its artifice and its cruel honesty, it's a movie Sirk would make today - and, as such, it's quite brilliant. Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: Moore's performance impresses almost as much as her work with Haynes in 1995's Safe. Read more

David Rooney, Variety: An accomplished marriage of elaborate style and content. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Without resorting to camp or parody, Haynes (like Sirk, but differently) has transformed the rhetoric of Hollywood melodrama into something provocative, rich, and strange. Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: The movie has the sense of being embalmed, or pickled. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: The very pleasing result: a movie that goes without hesitation for the major-chord emotions. A movie that needs hankies. Read more