Film Analysis: Far From Heaven

Todd Haynes's film Far from Heaven is a remake of Sirk's previously analyzed film. Haynes recovers in Far from Heaven not only the narrative line of All That Heaven Allows but also the techniques of melodrama, such as mise-en-scène, camera movements, or the film's composition, which make it possible to reinforce the sentimental connection of the viewer with the story (Higgins 101). Haynes emphasizes the power of melodrama’s visual techniques and music to move the emotions of the viewer “with saturated colours and the overdressed bourgeois splendour of Eisenhower’s America, [and a] music so full of forebonding and hidden emotionalism” (Thomson).
But Haynes does something more apart from paying tribute to Sirk's films, given that “Hollywood melodramas are all about the times in which they were made [and] Sirk’s movies (…) wouldn’t have looked or sounded as they had it not been for pressures like censorships and an extreme dependence on euphemism” (Patterson). The revisiting of the film allows its director to explore and criticize social aspects that would have been unthinkable in Sirk's time. Haynes' film highlights the timelessness of Sirk’s criticism of the American Dream and adds to these new elements of criticism. For example, “All that Heaven Allows strategically makes invisible (…) the African Americans” (Aguilera
In fact, it's a model for her little daughter, who aspires to be like her: “I hope I look exactly as pretty as you” (Haynes). As in the case of Cary, it stands out in this way that the only thing a woman could aspire to was beauty, to be a good housewife, that complemented a successful husband (in the case of Frank, he is a very successful executive in a technology company). Those women willing to try to achieve greater ambitions beyond those will suffer terrible consequences, as it will happen with the feminine protagonist of Revolutionary