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Tonight I finally had the chance to see Far From Heaven (2002), directed by Todd Haynes. It stars Julianne Moore as Cathy Whitaker, an upper middle class mother living in suburban Connecticut in the 1950s who realizes her husband is queer while she simultaneously finds herself falling in love with Raymond, the black owner of a garden supply shop in town who has taken over his late father's business affairs, including maintaining the Whitakers' garden. Todd Haynes is a filmmaker who is known for telling stories about complicated identities. His 1995 film, Safe, also starred Julianne Moore in her breakthrough role, playing a woman in San Fernando Valley who suffers from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, or "Twentieth-Century Disease," and eventually isolates herself from her friends, family, and the entire world while experiencing AIDS-like bodily degradation and resorting to the spurious self-help pseudo-philosophies that boomed in the 90s (and continue to thrive today—think of The Secret). In Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes weaves concerns of sexuality, race, and class within the framework of a period melodrama in the stylistic tradition of Douglas Sirk. The film represents queerness, particularly, with interesting complications, demonstrating how in some contexts heterosexual relationships are also non-normative. Due to the overt prejudices common in the '50s against interracial relationships, Cathy and Raymond's relationship takes on a queerness that mirrors that of her husband's secretive encounters with other men. What's interesting about the film's treatment of social issues is that its main characters are unsettled in their differing roles. Cathy is not portrayed as some kind of white hero for being perceived as "a friend of the negro" (as is written about her in the society pages of a local paper after she is witnessed treating Raymond respectfully). Indeed, in one scene she makes racialized class assumptions when she is overly surprised at Raymond's familiarity with modernist paintings, and then awkwardly takes pains to stress that she is not "prejudiced" and that she supports the NAACP. And yet in other scenes she is genuinely disgusted by racism in the town, even while she fails to question her own complicity with it. This kind of character incongruity reflects uniquely American social structures examined through a modernist lens of fracture and instability: how do characters perceive themselves and how do they act from their multiple positions in a changing social world?

And of course there are also Nick's inconsistent attitudes towards black folks in the novel. How he seems to belittle Tom's retrograde racist attitudes, yet describes the "modish" black folks driving the car in a way that is reminiscent of minstrel stereotypes, and seems condescending toward their "absurd" social climb despite his adulation of all things Gatsby, who is white or (as is discussed in another comment thread here) at least white passing.

I think that what sums up the movie best is Cathy’s quote, “It feels like there’s no one left in the world that I could talk to.” This really reflects the estrangement that she felt. The social structure was so rigid and racism so profoundly embedded in the society that the only thing that she was left with was pretence.