Safe

Rating:
Summary: Modern Retelling of Yellow Wallpaper
Review: The miracle of this film is that somehow Todd Haynes makes it compelling to watch Julianne Moore play Carol White, an inspid waif completely lost and languishing in the asylum of her huge house in San Fernando Valley. She's not even a sympathetic character as we watch her, confronting her boredom by shopping and going on fruit diets, disintegrate from a drab, soulless, wife to a sexless hypochondriac who regresses to the infant state, abandoning her family and moving to a "sanctuary" where she will find a "toxic-free, safe environment." The film succeeds as a satire against happy therapy speak, bovine middle-class self-help cliches, unctuous, self-help charlatans, panacea-promising infomercials, and the kind of needy people who lack the moral fortitude to confront their own weaknesses so instead rely on conspiracy theories and other kinds of scapegoats to explain their repellent personalities, blaming chemicals, for example, for their own ineptness. Carol White and her fellow acoyltes at the "sanctuary" are all brain-numbed on the humorless cult of New Age therapy, giving credence to a motivation speaker who lives in a grand mansion overlooking the shack house squalor of his followers. Ironically, Carol White is even more of a prisoner in her new "safe house" as she was in her husband's home. If you want to bite on an pungent appetizer before watching this brilliant two-hour film, first read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." It will really get you in the mood for the kind of insanity rendered in "Safe."

Rating:
Summary: TERRIFIC
Review: Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore construct a great film. Its calculated pacing gives the story ample time to dissect the terror of modern day life. It not only examines the fear of a chemically saturated enviorment (car exhaust is poison, after all), but the upper class fear of fitting in (if I dont get a new Mercedes, I'll look like a fool) Julianne Moore's preformance is no less than brillaint. The movie wouldnt work without her. Todd Haynes shows he is a gifted director. He gives the viewer exacty what is needed and nothing more. For the person who swears they can see bacteria on a doorknob, and the person who's trying to keep up with the Jones's next door.

Rating:
Summary: SAD
Review: J. Moore's acting in this movie was quite good.
On behalf of this movie I think it is quite profound and very SAD. It just shows how some people with their needy, selfish, attention starved and easily manipulated personalities, can so delude themselves. I thought the charcter of Carol White was pathetic and I felf very sorry for her husband and son. Her husband should have been stronger and gone to stronger measures to get her the REAL help she required (physchiatric treatment) not just an appointment. I also agree with someone's review , that she was more closed in and prison held, then she ever had been at her home.
This movie was Sad, but some how holds you to keep watching, and waiting for the character to snap out of it.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully subtle and poignant
Review: This is probably director Todd Haynes's least-known film, and probably his masterpiece. Like JEANNE DIEHLMANN..., the Chantal Ackerman which inspired it, SAFE moves at an incredibly slow pace for its first half to take you into the dreamlike world of its protagonist, a beautiful Los Angeles housewife with almost nothing to do. As you become accustomed to her rhythms, her mounting attacks from (what she believes to be) environmental hazards assume the dimensions of major catastrophes. There is a sequence where Julianne Moore goes into one of these attacks at a shower for a friend--while holding a child on her lap--that is one of the most horrifying scenes I've ever seen in a film, even though it culminates in little more than a nosebleed.

Is the heroine simply hysterical? Are there real environmental poisons at work devastating her body? Or is she reacting against a world that seems to have no place for her even while it pretends to value her highly for her beauty and her wealth? The film offers no easy answers, although it moves to a conclusion of the heroine at a dinner party (and then before a mirror) that will absolutely break your heart. Moore's performance may be the single best before a camera in the Nineties--she's really that good.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Allegory of Soul lost in Society
Review: The description "horror film of the soul" sums it up well. This is a film full of the despair of Carol White (Julianne Moore), a lost angel of Los Angeles. The whole 1st half seems to be setting the scenario that she's allergic not simply to the chemical biproducts of society, but to society itself, or possibly to her own soul's emptiness (another biproduct of society). The whole empty LA lifestyle atmosphere was created--the disco gym, the upper-middle class house chores, the freeway, the nadir husband, the vacuous baby shower guests--it all hints that Safe is going to blow the whole thing wide open and make a gigantic statement about the individual lost in society. It makes the statement alright, but in such a subtle way--even too subtle.

To the unperceptive viewer Safe may seem to end on a somewhat positive note, because of the subtlety. Actually the ending bears resemblance to that of Orwell's 1984, even using the same final words, "I love you". But instead of directing it to Big Brother (who doesn't really exist) she directs it toward herself (does SHE really exist?)

Carol feels an ominous dread accentuated by a deep-tone humming soundtrack to her attacks ostensibly brought on by milk, deodorant spray, exhaust fumes, bug spray, citrus, etc. The story hints at not merely toxic chemicals, but toxic people, thoughts. Now the reason for the 4 stars: what it does NOT even HINT at is toxic society. I.e. it does not in essence condemn society, but the biproducts...kind of like comdemning the Holocaust without condemning Nazis (and everything behind them).

The "solution" to Carol seems to be to go to a New Age Retreat. The best way to sum up this retreat is: the road to Oblivion is paved with good intentions. In the end no difference exists between her vacuous suburban mentality and the vacuous new age mentality (summed up in the "I like myself" void). It's better to see this film at least twice to figure out exactly what Safe means from your perspective...because it leaves so much open for interpretation.

Rating:
Summary: i actually said the word "wow" while watchig this film
Review: I'm a big fan of Julianne Moore, so I figurted if she's in it, the movie has to be good. I don't think I've ever been more right in my entire life. Her role as Carol White is arguably one of her best performances. In the first half, the film is kind of "a day in the life of Carol White", which shows you how boring and meaningless her life is. Trips to her little "dance around to madonna" classes, and making sure she gets the right color couch are the most importaint things in her life. Then, out of no where, she becomes alergic to all of the toxins around her. It is never clear in the film what sets this off, and Todd Haynes leaves it up to interpretation. I belive Carols sub-consious mind made her get sick so she might pay attention to what is really going on in her life. I don't think she is really allergic to the toxins in things like the newspaper ink, she's allergic to herself, her society and her situation. This is her bodies way of telling her to change something. But thats just what I believe. Watch the movie and see for yourself. The camera angles really blew me away. You never get to see a close up of Carols face until the very end when she half-heartedly tells herself " I love you" in the mirror, suggesting that you never really knew what was going on inside of heruntil that moment. The remainder of the film is shot from far away, making it look as if Carol is being engulfed in her surroundings. It's like she has no control over whats happening to her, and she is so small to the world. Carol never seems to be fully there, niether do her friends and husband. This further throws her into lonliness, and she doesn't know why.

Rating:
Summary: Julianne Moore shines in Todd Haines' dark "Safe"
Review: "Safe" is at once a heartbreaking drama of a person adrift in a world she cannot control, and a searing black comedic indictment of American therapy culture and upper-middle-class ennui. Depending on how you approach the film, you may find yourself laughing hysterically at the characters' empty, gaudy consumerist existence, or you may find yourself in tears over Julianne Moore's brilliant portrayal of a truly pitiable woman's descent into illness. Despite the director's best intentions, Moore in the end elicits sympathy for a rather unsympathetic character. Whether the character's illness is the result of "environmental overload" or a prison of her own making is the background question to ponder as you watch this film. I just wish they would lower the price of this video!!

Rating:
Summary: Eerie and brilliant
Review: I should start this review by stating that I'm not a Julianne Moore fan. A few years back a movie came out, called "Nine Months," that permanently turned me off this actress. In that movie, she played a whiny, obnoxious lady in a relationship with Hugh Grant. The whole picture revolved around the hijinks that ensued when Moore's character got pregnant and Grant didn't want kids. "Nine Months" was the most syrupy, sappy piece of fluff I have ever seen in my life. Think a Hallmark movie of the week with the emotional content pumped up on steroids, and you'll have an excellent idea of what "Nine Months" looked like. Oh, just to make it even worse, Tom Arnold and Joan Cusack appeared as these two grotesque superparent friends. Yuck. Despite my misgivings about Moore, I decided to give "Safe" a chance after reading its summary. The movie's premise, about a suburban housewife developing an allergy to modern society, was just too promising to pass up. I'm glad I watched the picture. Director Todd Haynes has scored a big coup with this grim take on American society towards the end of the twentieth century. And what a surprise! Moore actually tugged at my heartstrings in a decidedly non-icky way.

"Safe" is the story of Carol White, an adrift California housewife in the 1980s. Her life should satisfy: she lives with a husband and child she loves, spends her days doing whatever she wants to do, and lives in a huge house with plenty of money to throw around. What more could any American woman ask for? Apparently, quite a lot. In between the trips to the fitness center, the frequent lunches with female friends, and the important dinners with hubby's business pals, Carol begins to erode mentally and physically. If there's a starting point for this slow descent into illness, it seems to come when White throws a fit over a furniture company delivering the wrong couch. She soon cannot sleep, develops a hacking cough, and always feels bad. Her husband does not help matters. At first, he is sympathetic to his wife's plight, insisting she see a doctor (who finds nothing wrong with her) and offering emotional support. His goodwill doesn't last long, however, as he soon complains that Carol isn't fulfilling her duties as a wife and partner. The additional stress at home only compounds White's vague health problems. A trip to a psychologist offers little in the way of help, nor does a stay in the hospital after Carol has a seizure outside a dry cleaning business. This lady has a big problem, one that hauling around a little oxygen tank will not clear up anytime soon.

During the stay in the hospital, Carol finds salvation. An advertisement for a health spa called Wrenwood, located somewhere in New Mexico, promises to help people with unspecified health problems. Convinced this place is the only answer, White implores her husband to take her there. Wrenwood turns out to be both more and less than Carol White had hoped for. The facility is populated with a bunch of people, like White, who cannot seem to function in modern society. Even worse, the chap who runs the place, Peter Dunning, is one of those new age types. Dunning claims contracting the AIDS virus led him to set up the clinic so he can help people suffering from strange maladies. His speeches to his "patients," made in a special room complete with podium, cheesy murals, and musical instruments, convey the sense that this guy's running a cult. He likes to play around with people's minds, too, during intense "therapy" sessions where he tries to convince the patients that they made themselves sick. That may well be true in some of these cases, but the way Dunning goes about trying to heal these people is grotesque. In the end, Carol White is worse off than she was when she arrived at Wrenwood.

"Safe" works due to Haynes's masterful direction and sense of atmosphere. On more than one occasion, his cinematic approach reminded me of Stanley Kubrick. Haynes has that same ability to light and shoot a scene that looks like a giant hand squeezed all the emotion and life out of it. This tendency is especially prevalent in the first half of the film as we watch Carol start her slow decline. There's a great scene where we see White standing in her opulent living room, but Haynes shoots it so it looks like a mausoleum devoid of any feeling or life. If you look closely enough, Carol White appears as just another piece of furniture in the room. Amazing, simply amazing, and probably a good hint at the film's central theme. Our heroine really is just another ornament in this house, and her husband treats her that way. I suspect Carol's illness is related to her awareness that her life is essentially empty of meaning. Perhaps the illness is an attempt to get attention from those around her, or her body's way of rejecting the sterile background of her daily life.

Whatever the case, "Safe" is a deeply unsettling film that raises more questions than answers. Julianne Moore turns in a fabulous performance as the deeply flawed Carol White, as does Xander Berkeley as her distant husband. Peter Friedman threatens to steal the show, however, as the smarmy Peter Dunning. A commentary track on the disc done by Moore and Haynes seems to shoot holes in any attempt to see the film as a serious commentary on modern life. Both actress and director laugh and giggle a lot during the commentary, obviously getting a kick out of poking fun at the new age themes in the film. Still, "Safe" is an observation on our sick society, and fans of cinema will definitely want to check this gem out posthaste.

Rating:
Summary: YES!
Review: This is the most unforgetable movie I have ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: The feel-bad movie of the year!
Review: Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)

Julianne Moore has been around Hollywood for quite a while, but no one really sat up and took notice until she found Todd Haynes. Haynes has gained a good deal of underground cred with his feature debut, 1991's Poison, but the wider world didn't notice him until he hooked up with Julianne Moore, either. The two of them got together and, if this were a Hollywood film, would have made box-office magic with Safe.

But this isn't a Hollywood film, and that's not really what happened, though it did get Moore a lot more jobs, and got Haynes wide enough distribution to enable him to make Velvet Goldmine, the film that put him up into, if not the A-list, the top of the B-list. Why didn't Safe make everyone fall to their knees in worship of these two now-recognized giants? Well, simply, because it ain't all that hot.

Julianne Moore stars as Carol White, a suburban housewife (and even when Haynes is making a movie set in the present day--well, okay, this is the only one he's done to date that is--it has an oddly 1950s feel to it) whose marriage (to Greg, played by Xander Berkeley, who's been in so many films you've seen him at least once, you just never knew his name before) is of the stable-but-loveless variety, whose relationships with her neighbors is solid but sterile, whose house looks like a model home that no one lives in... you get the idea. Carol White's whole life is a study in sterility. (Those who have seen Far from Heaven should recognize this conceit.) Except, somehow, it's not sterile enough, because for no reason anyone can discern, she starts to develop what was, at the time, the film was made, known as environmental illness. (Think of today's buzzword, Sick Building Syndrome, but on steroids.) Things that she previously had no problem with start making her sick thanks to the arrival of a new couch (not, it should be noted, in the color she ordered, a point of contention at the beginning of the film that becomes an oddly endearing running joke). Greg is confused, but willing to support his wife as she tries to find a cure for the mess she's in. Doctor after doctor fails her, until she finds a retreat in the New Mexico desert run by a snake-oil salesman named Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman, another of those "you've seen him in lots of stuff in small parts"-type characters).

There is so very much here that Haynes could have worked with that goes unexplored. The main conflict, between Greg and Peter, could have been a whole movie in itself, but Haynes never does more than scratch the surface of the depths of Carol's different reactions to her husband (who is real and honest throughout) and Dunning (who tells her what she wants to hear). The scenes at Wrenwood, Dunning's complex, can be seen as having a kind of existential horror to them, but could have been played better. Things ranging from something as subtle as playing with the lighting to more concerted attempts at mind control (it's obvious from what's here that Dunning has himself a cadre of hardcore believers, but he never really does much with the fringe members) would have spun the last half of the movie in a much more sinister light; as it is, it comes off more Saturday the 14th than Friday the 13th. And, of course, the first scene where Moore shows outward signs of sickness, developing a cough that won't go away while driving a car, is arguably the most unintentionally funny scene of Julianne Moore's incredible career. What on EARTH were Moore and Haynes thinking when they made that scene? It certainly couldn't have been "this is going to be an emotionally powerful sequence that will make the viewer sympathize with Carol," since what is does is annoy the viewer and make him want to throw popcorn at the screen thanks to how badly Moore is overacting. (And really, you have to work at it to make a cough sound that fake.)

Safe ends up being yet another film where there is much unrealized potential, leading to frustration from the viewers. Still, it's worth seeing for a lot of interesting performances from a lot of people you recognize, but don't know, per se. Just hit the fast forward button every time Moore starts coughing, and you'll be fine. **