When I was in film school at Boston University way back in 2002, the very first class we had to take as film majors was an introductory course called UNDERSTANDING FILM. This was a film studies course where we watched, discussed, analyzed and wrote about various movies that were screened in class.
And the very first movie we watched in this class was the 1995 movie Safe by Todd Haynes.
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| The eerie movie poster for Safe. |
Every student in the class thought this was a strange choice. A typical first film for an introductory film course is likely Citizen Kane, Casablanca or something by Hitchcock or Kubrick. Safe, however, was an atypical choice and seemingly random.
Most students in my class despised the film. They thought it was boring, strange, uncomfortable, annoying and inaccessible.
As for me, I didn’t hate the film. I was actually intrigued by it, even though I was admittedly expecting to be watching a more traditional Hollywood movie.
Thinking back on all this now, almost 25 years later, the choice of watching Safe as a first film in an introductory film course feels even more atypical than it did then. I recently revisited the movie, which was available to view on Tubi, and I found it to be an even odder film than I remembered it being. To show this movie to a bunch of 19-year-old film students as the very first film in an introductory film course was a bold move for sure, almost like a (friendly) F-U to the student filmmaker, like the professor was saying, “You thought you’d be learning about how to make films like Hitchcock or Kubrick or maybe even like Spielberg, right? Well, what do you think of THIS sh**?!”
It seems kind of mean to subject young aspiring film students to a film like Safe right out of the gate, but, in hindsight, I think I understand why it was done:
To deprogram the film students.
But before I explain what I mean by “deprogramming,” let me first provide a quick synopsis of Safe’s plot.
Set in the late-1980s, the movie is about a homemaker named Carol White (played by Julianne Moore) living in an affluent section of the San Fernando valley. Her husband is a successful something-or-other; I don’t think it’s ever specified what he does other than he has “deadlines.” Overall, Carol is part of a rather shallow, materialistic world. She has a circle of friends whom she does aerobics with and goes to baby showers with, but she hardly connects with them and the relationship with these women is rather superficial.
Not long into the film, Carol begins experiencing strange symptoms like coughing, vomiting, asthma attacks and even seizure-like episodes. She sees her doctor about these symptoms, but he doesn’t find that there’s anything wrong with her. Carol and her husband are relieved at first, but her symptoms persist, and, in fact, they keep getting worse and worse. Her doctor still doesn’t find anything wrong, though, and he suggests Carol see a psychiatrist.
Carol does see the psychiatrist, but he ends up being just as unhelpful as her physician. Carol’s symptoms just keep intensifying and, eventually, it becomes clear that she has some sort of mystery illness that cannot be easily explained.
After seeing a flyer in her health club about environmental illness, Carol attends a seminar about the topic and she gradually becomes convinced that she is allergic to various pollutants as well as chemicals in her environment. She starts to wear a mask and carry around an oxygen tank, but she still doesn’t feel all that better.
Things come to a head when Carol is at the dry-cleaner’s one day while they are fumigating the building, she collapses, has an all-out seizure from the chemical exposure and ends up in the hospital. While in the hospital, she sees a news story about a chemical-free reservation called “Wrenwood” that is a kind of safe space for people with chemical sensitivities. Carol decides to go and live at Wrenwood where she becomes part of a community of fellow chemically-sensitive people.
At Wrenwood, Carol hears a lot of preaching from the chemical-free community’s founder Peter Dunning about the importance of “loving yourself” and how this is the key to healing from illness. This New Agey, self-help approach, however, ultimately seems just as unhelpful as the advice Carol received from her more conventional doctors.
The end of the film is haunting because Carol ends up saying “I love you” to herself while looking into a mirror, but she says this while living in an igloo-like cabin that is safe from any and all environmental toxins, yes, but completely isolating for her. Even if she does now actually “love herself,” which may or may not be the case, it doesn’t appear that she has had any breakthrough in both her physical health or her spiritual health. After all, in the very last shot we see of her before the end credits, Carol looks like absolute hell.
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| The last shot of Carol looking into the mirror. |
So that is more or less the plot of Safe. Needless to say, this is not a traditional film. Again, it is odd to say the very least. For some viewers, it is annoyingly odd and this was how most of my fellow film students felt about the film at BU. For other viewers, however, it is “odd” simply because it goes against everything a traditional Hollywood movie stands for, but they don’t necessarily see this as a bad thing. In fact, I believe this was the very reason why the film was shown to my introductory film studies course right at the outset: because it completely subverted everything that we thought we knew about what a movie should or shouldn’t be.
I don’t think most of us are consciously aware of how “trained” we are by Hollywood movies. Most of us are exposed to them at a very young age and probably see dozens of movies in a given year. Some see more, some see less, but we all watch a lot of movies over our lifetime. And most Hollywood movies are a different version of the same story. You have a traditional three-act structure, usually a well-defined “hero” or protagonist who we are rooting for, a well-defined “villain” or antagonist who we are NOT rooting for, a clear goal with conflict getting in the way of this goal, well-defined character arcs where the protagonist changes in some positive way by the end of the movie, and there is also usually some closure by the end of the movie as well.
In short, the story in a Hollywood movie generally needs to be “clear.” Ambiguity is seen as a bad thing, and this is what makes a movie like Safe so anti-Hollywood:
Because the movie is nothing but ambiguous.
First of all, there is the movie’s tone and genre. The film opens with a synth-heavy score that is dark and foreboding (I love this score, by the way). It sounds much like the music you would hear in a David Lynch film (like Mulholland Drive). The score definitely sounds like something out of a horror movie, but is Safereally a horror movie? Well, in a sense, it kiiiiind of is, but certainly not a traditional one. We keep on waiting for something super-dark to happen, like a murder or something, but we are ultimately denied this expectation. It’s like we’re given a bunch of horror foreplay without the climax. And we’re left feeling frustrated or at least confused.
The opening title sequence of the movie with the foreboding score.
A high-quality recording of the synth-heavy musical score (because it’s so good).
Then, of course, there is the “illness” itself, which Haynes purposely makes ambiguous. We never know for sure what is wrong with Carol White. Is she really chemically sensitive? Does she have a psychological disorder? Is she just unhappy with her shallow and overall meaningless life as a San Fernando homemaker? There is never a clear explanation and we’re left in the end without resolution.
Most ambiguous of all, however, are the characters themselves. We never quite know what to make of Carol White. Should we like her? Not like her? Because we’ve been so conditioned by Hollywood films, we want to like the main character of the movie and, although we do kind of sympathize with Carol, she seems so emotionally distant that it’s hard to get to a place where we are all in on rooting for her to win. Just when we think we may like her by the end of the film, she has a super-awkward birthday speech, parroting all the self-help advice she thinks the people at Wrenwood want to hear her say, and she looks so ridiculous that we find ourselves being turned off from her again.
Carol’s super-awkward birthday speech near the end of the movie.
Then there’s the character of Carol’s husband. How are we supposed to view him? In a traditional Hollywood movie, he would be the antagonist, but we never quite get there with him. There are some scenes where he comes off as insensitive and self-absorbed regarding Carol’s health situation, but then these scenes are quickly countered by scenes where he comes off as loving, caring and supportive of her situation. We keep on thinking that a scene is coming where his frustration with her mystery illness will reach a breaking point, he’ll tell Carol she’s crazy, cheat on her or divorce her. But nothing like this ever happens. We go through the whole film feeling unsure about what we’re supposed to think of him and we never get a clear answer by the end.
When it comes to Wrenwood, we’re hoping that this chemically-free sanctuary will be the key to saving Carol from her health crisis. But we never feel quite sure about who these Wrenwood characters are either. Some of them come off as crazy while others come off as extremely compassionate. Then there’s the founder of Wrenwood, Peter Dunning, and we never know how to feel about him either. On one hand, he seems caring and compassionate, but then he sometimes comes off as being a self-help, New-Agey, snake oil salesman. Our trust in this character is undermined even more when Carol points out the huge house he lives in, insinuating that Peter is a kind of con-artist taking advantage of the sick Wrenwood residents. But, again, as soon as we grow suspicious of him, we see the compassionate side of him again. He honors Carol for her birthday, eats dinner with and even dances with all the Wrenwood residents. What the hell are we supposed to think of him, anyway?!
The complete dinner/birthday party scene with Peter Dunning dancing with the residents.
The ultimate result of all this ambiguity in the movie is that the viewer feels kind of disoriented. One minute we think we understand who these characters are, then we don’t, then we think we do again, and then we don’t. The world of Safe is the furthest thing from being black and white. It is a constant gray, much like … well, reality itself.
So, if traditional Hollywood films condition us into thinking reality is defined by clarity (i.e. well-defined heroes, villains, character arcs, conflicts, resolutions etc.), a movie like Safe is the ultimate deconditioning film. It is a movie that deprograms the Hollywood mind.
And this is exactly why I feel my professor wanted to show a movie like Safe as the very first film in our UNDERSTANDING FILM course: because it deprogrammed our minds. Twenty years of being exposed to nothing but Hollywood films got us thinking that movies had to be a certain way, but a film like Safe reminded us that movies could be something completely different, something that was truer to the ambiguity and grayness of actual reality.
In retrospect, watching a film like Safe at BU makes more sense knowing what I know now about who was in charge of the Boston University film studies program at the time: a man named Ray Carney. Carney is known to be a renowned expert on John Cassavetes (his book Cassavetes on Cassavetes, which I highly recommend, is his masterwork). Cassavetes’ films are the epitome of ambiguous cinema. Although the two filmmakers have different styles, Cassavetes’ characters and Haynes’ characters (at least in Safe) are very gray. I think it’s clear that Carney’s intention was to essentially design UNDERSTANDING FILM to be a kind of re-education camp for film students. The message was, basically, “We want to teach you how to make films, but, first, we must show you that a film can be more than what you think it can be!”
Indeed, watching Safe is a good “re-education film,” no doubt about that, but does that mean it’s actually a good film? I mean, is it good simply because it subverts a viewer’s expectations of what a film should be? Or is it a good film because it’s simply a good film? I actually don’t know the answer to this question, because when all is said and done, I’m not sure I get a whole lot out of the film other than the fact that it challenged my expectations of what it was going to be.
I do, however, appreciate the film, if for no other reason than because it is so boldly different from most films out there. It’s a breath of fresh air when you watch a movie that reminds you that you don’t always have to provide an audience with easy answers and explanations. Much like a David Lynch film, you don’t really know what to take away from a movie like Safe or what the movie is even actually about, but it still leaves an impression, if not on a conscious level, then on a subconscious one. This is why, about 25 years later, I’m still thinking about this film even though I still don’t quite know what to make of it.
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MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses and I Turned into a Misfit! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.
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