Safe
 |
Our DVD Price: £7.99
RRP: £19.99 Save £12.00 (60%)
Availability
This product should be despatched within two weeks.
This product will be dispatched from Guernsey.
Delivery times
Earn 35 Bonus Points when you buy this product. More info
|
Film Description
A chilling environmental horror story where the enemy lurks in the air we breathe. Carol becomes allergic to everything she enjoys: clothes, food, sex, friends - and ends up in a porcelain igloo in the Nevada desert. Injected with horror, comic touches and psychological suspense, Safe is a visionary tale of contemporary existence.
Film Information
DVD Extras
Audio commentary with Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore; Trailer; Film notes; Filmographies.
Technical Details
| Certificate |
15 |
|
Length |
118 mins
|
|
Label |
TARTN |
| Cat No |
TVD3428 |
|
Format |
DVD |
|
Colour |
| Region | 0 |
|
Aspect |
Anamorphic Widescreen |
7 Stills
View Stills
Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review
Review by howard Schuman
on 6th February 2003
I try to see the good in all films. If a film director is honest and his motivations sincere and he has attempted to entertain or to challenge, I will give him/her the benefit of the doubt. There are a few exceptions, however. Some films I have a visceral dislike for because I feel that the director is either promoting an agenda, or simply being dishonest in presenting the material. One film that falls into this category is Safe by Todd Haynes. 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 Moores character, Carol, coming into an awareness of the emptiness of her life. At a dinner party scene early in the film we see that behind the laughter and amiable conversation surrounding her, Carol feels isolated and afraid. She has little sense of who she or of what is meaningful to her. She finds herself coughing and experiencing sudden fits of dizziness and nausea and we are meant to wonder what is wrong. The question is compelling; at one point it is suggested that Carol is simply "allergic to the 20th century." Unfortunately the film really slips up when Haynes takes us to Act Two.
Carol abandons her home and family and takes refuge in the "chemical-free zone" of Wrenwood, a healing facility out in the desert. She wants to retreat from the whole world. Wrenwood is presented as a New Age cult, run by the slick Peter Dunning (Peter Friedman) who is infected with AIDS. In the words of reviewer Steven Shaviro, "He (Peter) encourages Carol to look inward, into herself. Her selfhood is as carefully nourished in Wrenwood as it was denied at home. You yourself are responsible for your illness, Peter tells her. If you got sick, its because on some level you chose to. If you want to get well, shut your eyes and ears to everything from outside. Purge away those negative feelings, and give yourself to love. Learn to cherish and love yourself, and everything will be fine". However, Carol does not progress but gets worse. She loses all sense of her identity, and at the end of the film is as lost regarding her sickness as at the beginning.
The problem I have with the film is not so much that Wrenwood fails to help Carol, or even that the group is portrayed negatively. What I object to is the casual way that Haynes recycles the worst cliches and falsehoods regarding self-help movements, and to my mind, est in particular. Peter Dunning is portrayed as a slick phony, praying on peoples insecurities with a combination of charisma and empty pieties. It follows that Wrenwoods participants are dupes, brainwashed, taken advantage of. In my personal experience, the goal of these programs was to transform people so that they could experience themselves and the people around them fully, with love and with joy. The fact that over a million people participated in est and in similar movements attests to the fact that, in the main, people got value from them and shared it with people they cared about.
Because Haynes uses ideas that have a direct basis in reality, there is a burden to be honest about what these movements stood for and practiced. Yet, Haynes\' approach is cynical and fundamentally dishonest. The truth is that no one in any of the self-help programs I was familiar with ever told anyone anything such as Peter tells Carol. Many came to similar conclusions but only through looking inward and discovering the truth for themselves.
Haynes failure in portraying the group at Wrenwood is problematic not only ethically, but finally, and perhaps most important, dramatically. Watching this section of the film, one senses that Haynes is not truly invested in the journey of his protagonist; rather, he is leading Carol around like a puppet through events contrived to enforce his own attitude toward self-help groups. The action falls flat, as the film becomes nothing more than a moody demonstration of cliched and profoundly false assumptions. A serious issue such as the one Haynes has developed in the beginning of the film demands a serious exploration. Safe never follows through on its intriguing premise.
View more reviews by howard Schuman
Review by Barry Forshaw
on 11th July 2003
Disturbing fare from Todd Haynes (director of Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven), enriched by a typically intense performance from Julianne Moore as a bored but affluent Californian housewife who develops an illness that puts her at odds with daily living. As her allergies increase and health deteriorates, she seeks out a safe haven in an igloo-like isolation tank.
View more reviews by Barry Forshaw
Browse all Film Reviews
Recommendations from fellow customers
 Breathless (Godard, 1959)
by Jean-Luc Godard
 La Regle du Jeu
by Jean Renoir
 Seven Samurai
by Akira Kurosawa
 Throne Of Blood
by Akira Kurosawa
 La Terra Trema
by Luchino Visconti
More films directed by Todd Haynes
Velvet Goldmine Far From Heaven Im Not There
View more >
More films starring Julianne Moore
Cookies Fortune by Robert Altman Boogie Nights by Paul Thomas Anderson Short Cuts by Robert Altman Assassins by Richard Donner The End of the Affair (Jordan, 1999) by Neil Jordan
View more >
|
