Safe Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

Peerless

Todd Haynes' cold, hard allegorical horror movie is a masterpiece. Ostensibly telling the story of an over-privileged Los Angeles housewife who slowly becomes allergic to living in the 20th century, this deceptive, slow-burning tale has been taken by many to be a metaphorical AIDS parable. Although it works, quite brilliantly, on that level, the suggestion that the focal illness is nothing more than psychosis, brought about by the complete lack of significance in the affluent, robotic, Stepford-esque set of scheduled routines that Carol (Julianne Moore) calls her life, is a far richer and more compelling interpretation. Regardless, subtext is not essential to the film's success, as it works quite wonderfully with or without it. Haynes' flourishes, particularly in the opening 40 minutes, are astonishing; the clinical, disengaged long-shot camerawork makes the whole film seem as if it is being viewed from a laboratory; the queasy, ever-present hum of air conditioning units and distant road traffic on the soundtrack during the interior sequences, vividly create a world rammed to the ceilings with potential disease; and the use of bland, almost lavatorial industrialized inner-city locations not only highlights everyone's complete separation from nature, but also visualises Carol's complete social and psychological isolation. The haunting, retro electronic score (which wouldn't sound out of place in an early Romero picture) is both aptly synthetic and quietly chilling, and Julianne Moore as the delicate, waspish Carol, gives absolutely nothing less than the performance of a lifetime. If all this sounds high-minded and conceited, its not; this is pure, resplendent cinema, and one of the defining films of its decade. It is, quite possibly, also the finest.

Haunted?

"Safe" is haunted by a "Stepford Wives" feel. Carol White's husband is successful, his son nice, his dead wife died - how? Carol, however, sends up flares from the first moment. She is contained, perfect, quiet-spoken, entirely intent on fitting in and being approved of. Does this remind you of - a child? Perhaps even an abused child who has learned the "safe" way to survive and thrive?

The film is driven by an undercurrent that is never fully addressed. The environment has become inimical to Carol's being, but why? We are pushed to explore the question gnawing at us from beneath the quiet exploration of American San Fernando Valley success. Besides "The Stepford Wives," I think of Phyllis Chesler's Women and Madness (1972) and Donald Bain's The CIA's Control of Candy Jones (1976). Chesler's book is about the Freudian psychiatric bias against women, and "Candy" about the CIA's now-well-documented use of hypnosis, drugs, and trauma to create multiple personalities useful to "national security."

Perhaps it is enough to read Carol White's zombie-like existence that finally breaks down into an environmental illness as the vacuousness of the machinated 20th century lifestyle, but I sense something more ominous. Where did all her distance come from? Who exactly is her husband? What is their background?