Safe

Plot synopsis:
The story is of Carol White (Julianne Moore) and her husband Greg (Xander Berkeley) living with their son in the San Fernando Valley. She is seemingly perfect, but she begins to get strangely sick, reacting to various things in her surroundings and attempts changing her diet and habits. Her doctor can't find anything medically amiss and she consults with a psychiatric physician. She collapses while she is driving her car back home one day and she and a doctor figure out she does a mild allergy. She begins to seek answers to her growing illness but no doctor or psychologist can find the source of her ealing: it may be on her mind, because further tests show that she is not allergic to anything. She does a strong diet, advised by her friend Nell (Mary Carver). However, she starts blaming chemical products in food, cleaning products, clothes, pollutants... She freaks out during a party in honour of another female friend, heavily pregnant.Investigating further, she finds a retreat called Wrenwood, eventually relocating there, where the other members are treated by a smooth-talking doctor who entreats them to look inside themselves for the cure to their varying illnesses. Meanwhile, all the inmates' clothes are made of cotton, all food and drink is organic and cars are forbidden, as she is shout at the first time she arrives to the place. A marriage who has relocated there because of his health have built themselves a kind of bunker/igloo with controlled air and water. However, he'll die anyway.Carol discovers that there is a highway nearby the compound, so she asks to be relocated within Wrenwood. Once, when Greg and the child visit her, they have very cold conversations, without any physical contact. It looks like that Carol's illness is a great inconvenience to her family, and no close friends visit her ever.Carol leaves her family and takes up residence in the isolated igloo where she can confront herself and her inner feelings. The film ends with Carol looking at herself in a mirror, saying "I love you" with a sad barren face.

Tags: allegory, psychedelic

Review:
I watched Safe for our coverage of 1980s's health movements and the AIDS virus with a special eye for the conflict between New Age healers and "the medical profession."  Safe connects so well with both; although there's no real homosexuality anxieties in the film, AIDS seem the unconquerable illness penetrating the lives of happy suburban people.First of all, Julianne Moore is absent in the film.
This is a film which demands thought and concentration, and what you take from it will depend upon individual disposition and experience.The dialogue is generally sparse and quite functional, meaning that emphasis is placed onto the menacing soundtrack (giving the film a horror/thriller feel), the meticulously orchestrated mise-en-scene and, of course, the amazing nuances and depth of Julianne Moore's artistic gifts.
As Safe quietly satirises the 80s, the delayed release improves it, adding another layer of perspective to a heroine who lives life in a series of bubbles.It's 1987, and timid California housewife Carol (a young Julianne Moore) is immersed in upper-middle class minutiae  ensuring her couch is the right colour, sleepwalking through a tepid aerobics class, and submitting to her husband (Greg White from 24).
Writer and director Haynes has combined aspects of the disease film (e.g. Love Story) with the psychological thriller  as Carol doesn't know what triggers her symptoms, the audience never knows when she'll have another attack.While Haymes criticises the New Age belief that illness is psychologically-based, in Carol's case, it's impossible to separate the psychological and physical aspects of her illness.
Despite a lot of fluffy, positive talk on behalf of an AIDS victim guru, Carol's physical and spiritual condition only decline at Wrenwood--she becomes more and more like Lester, the faceless guy in the white suit (the perfect new age suburbanite) who is afraid of everything and is expected to die based on that fear..
The fakeness that can sometimes surround you and the purpose of your life can be questioned at many times in your life.This isn't a film for everyone and I know if I recommended this film to some of my friends, they would watch it and then say to me 'What the hell was the point of this film?' This film does move at a somewhat slow and subtle pace in that you aren't given all the answers, and in fact you really aren't given any answers, but rather things to think about so you can discuss what is happening to this character.
Safe sort of made me think about that in that if I was allergic to things that make up such an important part of my life, what would I be doing if that happened.Julianne Moore is a stunning actress and this film highlights how convincing she can be as a character that makes subtlety so loud in a performance.This film will make you think a lot, but perhaps it will make you think for good reasons..
The beauty of the film lies in the deceptively simple, almost transparent manner in which a complex story with no easy answers is presented.The main theme of the movie is reflected in the title: what is it that constitutes a feeling of "safety" in our lives?
In the case of Carol White, the focus of the movie, these are questions she is forced (or possibly forces herself?) to confront, with the odds of success being 50-50 at best."Safe" explores some of the themes Haynes tackled in "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story." (This movie is hard to find, though you might want to check out the illegal-art dot org web site.) There are a number of similarities between the two films: the view-from-a-car shots of bland suburban streets and the power lines to which they are tethered; the consumer-driven lifestyle of most Americans; the depiction of people as mannequins; the focus on one's external life to the detriment of one's inner life.
Watching the WASPish, vacant, and utterly clueless Carole (played by chameleon beyond compare Julianne Moore) slowly morph from armpiece San Fernando wife to a fragile shell of a person, may not be an experience you will enjoy at first, as a close friend of mine said after viewing "There's no damn way I'd pay eight bucks for that!".
It is an interesting study in the effectiveness of true psychologically jarring film making, where much is left to the audiences imagination - including the root of this strange affliction, the viability of these help groups, and indeed Carole's perception of all that is happening to and around her.The soundtrack is perfect - simple eery piano over looming synth.
Although, as the study of film progresses Safe is being viewed under a differently light and becoming more accepted amongst American movie goers, developing what looks like the beginnings of a cult following.
The real focus of analysis involves one extremely short scene: where Carol White comes home and stares at the new furniture after it has been brought into the house a second time, which was about half way through the film.
As the reactions get worse, Carol starts to feel trapped by her own surroundings and begins to believe that her illnesses are being caused by pollutions and chemicals around her in the world.As Theo has already stated in his review, this is a film that is hard to put in a box but, hoping that it will become a thriller or a "normal" drama will certainly not help you get into it because this is a film that, with the best will in the world, is a strange affair that is deliberately hard to put a finger on.
The film opens with a great feel of emptiness and isolation that Haynes creates with clever framing of his shots; this makes the film feel like it is going to be a slowburn horror, but it works better than this because the "horror" is actually just the blandness of Carol's upper-middle-class life.
At times it appeared to be savaging the new-age illnesses of the Californian bored, at others it seemed to be very clear that Carol was sick.Sadly the downside of this mood of ambiguity and isolation is that the film moves very slowly and doesn't actually deliver any satisfying conclusions.
As much as I wanted not to see this as a problem (because I liked the aspects of the film that produced this as a bi-product) it is hard to ignore it although I personally felt there was enough going on from writer and director Haynes to make up for the inherent weakness it caused.
Director/writer Haynes has done a great job of producing a feel to the whole film that compliments the story and, in turn, he has brought a great performance out of Moore.
The film opens in '87, three years after that promise, in a sunny suburb somewhere in south California, and it's reasonable to assume this couple, with their spacious home, their well-kept garden, their ample free time, is one of many who were soothed by that promise, the promise to have a Dream, into a kind of comfortable sleep.Todd Haynes has the benefit of building upon Lynch, which is to say the option of discarding in hindsight the sexual darkness of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, the film opens to that effect with the woman having bland, passionless sex.
One of the most inspired things about Safe is Haynes' use of insipid 1980s music and fads as the backdrop to Carol's passionless Barbie doll-like life.
Perhaps the scariest thing about Safe (and maybe why the IMDb classifies this as a "thriller"), is the suggestion that even Carol's own best efforts to get well, shaped as they are by her own bland notions of what life should be, might fail.It takes a lot of patience to watch Safe, but, as Safe demonstrates, Haynes isn't into instant gratification..
Fifth, there IS such a place as depicted in the film, a small community located not near Alburquerque but in central Texas.This movie about the wraithlike Carol White whose ill-defined allergies drive her from an upper middle-class existence to a "safe" house on an isolated ranch designed for people like her is a tragedy that can be read at three different levels.
(Its deliberate pace and glacial camera moves are most reminiscent of Cronenberg's masterpiece, "Dead Ringers.")Set in the San Fernando Valley in 1987, "Safe" is all about Carol, an idle homemaker played by Julianne Moore, who tries to control her environment, but her environment ends up controlling her.
If we're classing it as a horror  I know I'd be scared to sit through it again, but only because it's a bad movie.The main character in question (Carol White played by Julianne Moore) finds out that she has an illness.
The movie didn't feel like exploring that route, so apparently, that crap doesn't matter.--Lots of scenes of Julianne Moore doing the following: Looking sad, Looking depressed, Looking placid, Crying, Weeping, or having an "allergic reaction" to chemicals of the 20th Century.--Nary an entertaining moment in the entire movie.
Then I'd just be aggravated and, quite likely, lose the will to fight for survival against the poisonous hordes of creatures dumped on me.The Ugly:--This movie is 2 hours long.--Unsatisfying ending.Memorable Scene:--The opening scene is Julianne Moore looking placid while her husband fvcks her.
I wouldn't class SAFE as any of those things ( Though " A dark drama " probably comes closest ) and when you've got so many people debating what type of movie it is then this can only be seen as a failure of sorts Julianne Moore plays Carol White , a home maker who is married to a rich man and who lives in a very nice big house in California , and perhaps a woman who has it all apart from a good sex life ( A sex scene opens the movie and boy does Carol look bored ) but as the story progresses Carol becomes more and more sicker and the doctors don't know what's wrong with her The serious problemwith the story - And it's a serious problem - is that the audience are expecting something to happen along the lines of Carol's husband is giving her poison so he can elope with a mistress but halfway through the story it's revealed Carol is allergic to the 21st century via chemicals etc .
I was thinking that when Carol reaches the new age commune the guru in charge is revealed to be a Mr Kurtz type maniac from THE HEART OF DARKNESS and at one one point this is suggested but then the story just ends and the audience are left puzzled as to what the story is about SAFE was written and directed by Todd Haynes and I've pointed out his failings as a writer with this film but I also have a problem with his directing - It looks like he's almost trying to parody the work of Stanley Kubrick .
I'm not sure that the movie is even convinced it might eventually be possible.As ever, Julianne Moore gives a terrific central performance playing a woman who seemed to me to be highly suggestible, so that when there is something wrong with her, she's looking for patterns and fusing the leads together in the wrong way, making things worse.
Although it is too long by about 20 minutes, Safe is a worthy addition to those films that try to describe what's wrong with our society by creating a counter-world.I liked Peter Friedman as the clinic leader; he made me think of a much brainier Jim Jones.
One disease gaining attention as of late is "Twentieth Century Sickness" or environmental illness, frightening consequences of which are explored in director Todd Haynes' narrative film SAFE.Haynes, creator of such controversial films as SUPERSTAR: THE KAREN CARPENTER STORY (told with Barbie dolls) and POISON comments on his latest choice of subject: "For me, living in New York City in the 90's has meant witnessing on a daily basis the disintegration of the American 20th century.
Filmed on location in Califronia's San Fernando Valley, it explores the emotionally sterile world of Carol White, a rich suburban housewife played by Julianne Moore.
A quiet, disturbing horror story of Carol White a meek, uninteresting housewife, Julianne Moore as Carol White living a mundane existence in a safe community of banality."Safe" with its horror-film music on the soundtrack and long slow takes of our heroine becoming slowly overcome by the unseen forces of the world stands as post-modern comment on religion-deplete society.Weightier is the fact that our infected lead character is a woman who holds the possibility of birth, is a masterstroke of Todd Haynes excellent story.The people in the film don't live in a God-ruled world; the real forces at work are the consumers, and the pockets of alternate social groups that exert communal power.A woman of the earth, we meet Carol White first by hearing her sneeze as she gets out of the car - her name echoes the blood, (symbolic of the 'white' blood cells?).Made in 1995 and coming in at 121 minutes the feature is a slippery revisionist take on the paranoia thriller.
She seems disconnected with her friends at lunch and at her aerobics class, she is out of synch with her husband's friends at dinner.She seems most alive in natural environments- we see her in the garden happy and alive, and later when she is beginning to get ill we see her escape at night to the garden.When she enters into the church of New Age Health run by Peter Friedman's character Peter Dunning, she spends most of her time in natural scenes where trees and grass replace the automobiles and shopping centers of Los Angeles.If there was ever a film that cried out for Man to return to Nature it is this one, with its heroine Carol consistently drinking the white milk of nourishment.Her very name proclaims that she is a character of pure substance- Carol White even later in the film has her hair permed and retains a halo of ringlets, but is still so out of synch with her society that she interacts even less with her husband and son.The only real family she can produce is the rag-tag tribe of health nuts who retreat from society to live in the wilderness, and seek a cure from within themselves.Their leader asks them in groups to claim that their sickness is a result of emotions inside them, thus countering what medical experts claim to be able to achieve.Although Carol's doctor did find an allergy to something, this small discovery does not do much to change Carol's mood- she is not a part of the society she lives in with her husband.Later when Carol is writing a letter to Wrenwood, a sanatorium for un-healthy folks, her husband walks in and she breaks down crying asking him where is she.
This is the center of the film with this character confronted by her isolation form the society she lives in.The features on the DVD offers commentary from director Todd Haynes, and Julienne Moore about how they structured the story and particularly how they funded the film, a particularly interesting thing for struggling film-makers given that "Safe" was made for under a million dollars.The film is an allegory, a haunted-house tale, in which the haunted house is the chemical-laden world we live in and the ghosts are in the food we eat, and the soap we wash with, and the air we breathe, and even the material we use to construct our world.It is also obliquely a statement about AIDS.
Carol and Chris- their name together sounds like a religious prayer.In a final moment of self-reflection Carol enters her new igloo-like home in the wilderness of Wrenwood and slowly states to her face in the mirror "I love you".The film asks us to return to our own selves to begin the healing process, whatever that healing need is.If for instance the answer to AIDS is like the answer to the mysterious disease that Carol has, is it right to move out of society?
Safe is a little-known masterpiece from director Todd Haynes, who later directed Velvet Goldmine and the highly successful Far from Heaven.The film begins brilliantly, subtly evoking the underlying menace of everyday life that troubles the film's lead character, the self-professed homemaker Carol White, played in a performance of wonderful understatement by Julianne Moore.
Although I haven't seen Far From Heaven, I still can safely say on the evidence of this film that Todd Haynes is a great director.Julianne Moore plays a vacuous suburban housewife who gets sick by an unspecified disease.
"Safe" is at the same time all these things (and no doubt a few others beside): It's a loving AND clinical portrait, a deep psychological thriller (to the extent you find it compelling), it could very well be a cautionary tale, it finds the line between straight-up narrative and documentary and dances on that line with incredible skill.If you are willing to invest your attention in an enormously artful film with no pat, happy ending--and in fact a burden of unresolved lostness-- watch it.
Having found no doctor who can help her, Carol takes refuge in a creepy new-age cult in the desert - but instead of getting better she gets much worse.The story itself is pretty lame, but the extremely subtle and intelligent dialog, the absolutely perfect direction, editing and photography, and Julianne Moore's tight, brutal performance make it fascinating.
And here it comes (for me) the big question about "Safe": as I watched it I thought that Moore's character was going' through a personality crisis because of her meaningless life and that way she gets involved with sort of a New Age sect.
The film was made in 1995 and has received a great deal of praise."Safe" features an outstanding performance by Julianne Moore, and does well to express the sense of unease and dislocation that many people experience in the modern urban world.
The movie begins with Moore's character, Carol, coming into an awareness of the emptiness of her life.
This was only Todd Haynes second feature and its a very impressive looking film with a solid performance by Julianne Moore.