Fear and loathing in suburbia: Todd Haynes' Safe

Safe

***** - a masterpiece

Is Safe a horror flick? An extended AIDS metaphor? A disguised gay film? A satire of 80s suburbia and New Age healing? A tale of spiritual loss? I'd say elements of all of the above - but most notably, a horrifying tale of spiritual loss.

What makes Safe so horrifying, outside of its eerie tone, is the fact that it underscores humanity's psychological ability to go to extreme lengths for a sense of normalcy, and spiritual wholeness. The human mind is the world's most fantastic, complex and mysterious element - and in that sense, is also capable of terror, delusion and destruction (in this case, self-destruction). There is a character (shown in the photograph above) that is the film's most extreme and eerie example of delusion - cut off from all reality, living a life of extreme fear. What's horrifying about this film is that the villain comes from a matter of differing outside sources, but mainly is the "heroine" herself (played brilliantly by Julianne Moore - who I'd argue the greatest living film actress).

Writer/director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) commented that he felt it was a "gay film", and I'd argue in support of that, but not because of any parallels that can be found with AIDS (which is not a homosexual-exclusive disease, by any means). The early scenes of social isolation point to parallels with the "gay experience" (or really the experience of any minority - but the difference here is that the separate comes as a result of something that is internal, rather than external) - but the main gay relevance I found was in relation to the extent in which the characters go in the film for a sense of normalcy.

Because homosexuality is an internal expression (there is essentially no way of telling whether or not someone is gay) - there are specific delusions that come as a result (shame, guilty, self-denial - to name a few). Those delusions come in many forms - from "gay-to-straight" counseling, living a "heterosexual" life - to the opposite extreme of blind conformity to social expectations placed on gays (including promiscuity - where the AIDS parallel is at its most strong). All of those expressions are comparable (although tend to not have physical manifestations - unlike the sickness caused in the film - outside of AIDS and promiscuity) to what is shown in the film, as all are quests for normalcy that result in negative - and sometimes extreme - consequences.

Article Author: John Lars Ericson

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