Safe
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Movie Reviews of Safe
Movie Review: One to ponder
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked it. It's disturbing 'cuz there is no escaping this world... something incredibly sucky always lies at the heart of it no matter where you are or what you do. There is no "answer" but people continue to make themselves sick by searching in vain for one.Movie Review: Some recoil from pine-scented cleaning power
Summary: 3 Stars
I had seen this movie a few years ago and really liked it, so I was eager to watch it again at some point and get it up on this site. At that time I was going to gather a themed collection of horror movies that aren't really horror movies, but that idea fell away and now I can't remember what any of the other movies in it might have been.
We open with these credits as we see the driver's POV of a car moving through a subdivision at night. This is the San Fernando Valley of 1987. Then we see Julianne Moore as Carol, having sex with her husband. She is clearly not interested, but she's good, the way she goes through the motions of periodically rubbing his back and giving him a little kiss after he's done. She goes to aerobics class, and afterward her friends observe that she doesn't sweat.
Carol is expecting a new couch to be delivered. She comes home to receive a call from her mother [Carol: "He's fine. She's fine. They're fine. I will. I will, mother."], then turns to see that the couch has come, and it's black. It's black and she ordered teal! This is the start of all Carol's problems, and this time, it hit all too close to home for me: I'M expecting a couch to be delivered in a few days! Would mine, too, prove to be an ominous omen of lingering ill reproach?
By this time you will have noticed that there is always some sort of TV or radio on in the background. Carol's discovery of the couch is hilariously set to "Turn Your Love Around," and we hear many other examples of the banal media that surrounds us. Her maids gossip in Spanish and ignore Carol's calls. Carol returns to the store and is informed that the order states she wanted black. "Well that's impossible," she says, "because it doesn't go with anything we have." Afterward, she is driving behind a truck that does not seem to be meeting state and federal emissions regulations. She starts coughing uncontrollably, and pulls into a parking garage, driving through the anonymous space as she hacks and wheezes. It's creepy and scary.
SPOILERS > > >
We cut from a line of cars on the freeway to a shot of the planet Earth--I love thematically obvious stuff like this. Then her son reads his school report at dinner, about street gangs, with special emphasis on murders, shootings, stabbings, dismemberment.... Then Carol gets a perm--and a nosebleed. Around this time one has begun to notice the large amount of shots set near windows with cars passing by outside. Her husband finds that Carol no longer wants to have sex. He holds her--and she pukes!
One day she finds a flyer in the supermarket saying "Are you allergic to the 20th century?" which informs her about people who are environmentally sensitive. She goes to her doctor, but he can't find anything wrong with her. She has another attack at a baby or wedding shower, and tells her husband that she's become allergic to all the chemicals that pervade our environment. "So you think you've been sick because of... bug spray?" he asks.
It goes on. Eventually Carol builds 'safe' room in her house, and soon after takes off for Rainwood, this retreat for chemically-sensitive people, where she meets a featured patient played by Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Phantom of the Paradise. She also meets guru Peter, who one patient says is environmentally sensitive AND has AIDS, so "his perspective is incredibly vast." Depending on your point of view, she either finds understanding at last or goes completely off the deep end.
< < < SPOILERS END
As a conversation piece, it brings up a great deal, chief among which is whether this illness is real at all, or just psychosomatic. When I watched this the first time, I thought it was quite obvious that it was psychosomatic, but now I think the movie is fairly open about how it could be interpreted, and in many ways isn't really about environmental illness at all. There are many who interpret it to be about AIDS, but I think it's mostly about disaffection from the modern world [making it a great double-feature with Ghost World], with the title being ironic; can we ever really be safe? What does it mean to be safe? Most of the chemicals in the products we use are at 'safe' levels. We are clearly shown that Carol doesn't enjoy sex with her husband, but what's interesting about the movie, leaving it open to interpretation, is that although the rest of Carol's life seems boring and banal to US, with the constant talk radio and insipid music [not that "Turn Your Love Around" is insipid... well, okay, but not that that's a problem], and aerobics classes and showers and fruit diets, we don't necessarily get much evidence that it's banal to HER. That is to say, her life in incredibly empty, but we don't know for sure if she finds it empty, or we're just projecting onto her.
Now I have "Turn Your Love Around" in my head.
Part of what made me feel this way was an article in New York Magazine about parents with chemical sensitivities, and it mentioned that those people consider this movie their statement. I was like; "WHAT?! It's an obvious satire!" but upon review, maybe it's not that obvious. So who knows. Regardless, you might find this Wiki page on MCS, or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, fascinating, as I did. In it we find that doctors can still find no evidence of a physical basis for their symptoms, and that MCS correlates strongly with depression...
Since I watched the movie, I read the essay the writer / director wrote for the DVD booklet, and learned, somewhat to my disappointment, that he does in fact believe in environmental illness, and was making this completely clear and straightforward movie about it. He also explicitly states that he also saw it as a parallel to the AIDS crisis. So, shows what the I know, though I consider it a strength that the movie can be interpreted in multiple ways. By the way, this movie shares an odd number of elements with The Incredible Shrinking Woman. In that film, Lily Tomlin begins shrinking because of all the chemicals in her environment, and there is a similar scene of her trapped in a car with an aerosol chemical, and coughing terribly.
But, as a movie? Definitely interesting, but perhaps it leaves a bit to be desired in the storytelling department. This is more of a statement than a drama. Carol has an attack! Then she has a worse attack! Then a WORSE attack! That's about the structure of the screenplay, and while I found it very compelling the first time, in retrospect I think maybe that was just the novelty of the concept. This time--there just isn't much of a story here. The movie is still quite different and worth watching, it's just less of a complete story and structured film than I hoped it would be. It's kind of more of a conversation piece than anything.
Movie Review: SAD
Summary: 3 Stars
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.
Movie Review: The slowest-moving 'horror' movie ever made.
Summary: 3 Stars
Yes, Safe is a horror movie. Ostensibly dealing with "environmental illness," the viewer is left to decide whether the heroine is indeed sick or has imagined it all. Regardless, after seeing all types of traditional and non-traditional doctors, Moore's character ends up on an isolated New Mexico retreat where she still can't escape those nasty environmental toxins. Her only "safe" place is inside of a geodesic dome scarcely bigger than a pup tent. Creepy and unsettling.
Safe moves at an extremely leisurely pace. Julianne Moore turns in a harrowing performance. I recommend this movie.
Movie Review: The feel-bad movie of the year!
Summary: 2 Stars
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. **