Tuesday, March 08, 2022
Safe
- Commentary: I watched this movie today, 3/21/2022. The experience was somewhat unsettling for me, for a few reasons. I don't think I've ever mentioned this before, but when I watch a movie that has a soundtrack of popular music from an era through which I lived and in which I paid particular attention to that popular music, I find it disquieting. This doesn't happen often. Luckily, I don't end up obtaining many movies that have vivid sound tracks with which I personally identify. In the case of this movie, for me, because I was so familiar with the soundtrack and associated it with a very specific time in my life in which I was in my car a lot, listening to the radio, traveling from job to job, hearing the soundtrack took me out of the movie and whipped me back to that time.
Other than that, I thought Julianne Moore's performance was astonishing, the character she played was even more astonishing, and, although I've never lived through such a character crisis, had circumstances been a bit different in my life, had I, for instance, gotten married, kept a home for a family, lived in an environment with very strict behavioral codes, I could imagine myself adopting some of that character's behaviors, just in order to remain standing. This surprised me, as it made me aware of the differences between expression of one's self and the expression of other's expectations of one's role that continues to plague women 35 years after the period of time this movie portrays and 27 years after this movie hit the screens. Todd Haynes, himself, has referred to this movie as a horror film. I would have to agree, and a damned subtle and intriguing horror film, at that, which continues, in my opinion, to seem applicable to the lives of women.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Julianne Moore Carol White Peter Friedman Peter Dunning James LeGros Chris Susan Norman Linda
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 1995
Directed by Todd Haynes.
Labels: Criterion4, dramaE, horror1, julianne-moore, psychological1, women's-movie2
