A critique of a film
Day by day, it is increasingly more difficult to maintain safety in our society, since interactions between people create dangers, either at ‘high’ political level, or on the daily basis.
We live not in the no-man’s-land, so people adjust to new conditions and changing situations. Still, there are those, who cannot accept this environment and who, probably, cannot be accepted. Being busy with our education and careers, we simply have no time to think carefully about the hidden threats of the environment, which can be really aggressive, and even destruct our bodies.
In the movie ‘Safe’, Carol White (Julianne Moore) lives with her husband and stepson in a comfortable suburban home in California. Her life is completely predictable, and in spite of the fact that she has ‘relationship’ with her husband, she begins feeling isolated and then – drained and depressed.
Mysteriously, she falls ill with weird symptoms: she experiences nose bleedings, dizziness and allergies, and doctor attributes it to stress. Having passed different tests, she understand that there is nothing physically wrong with her, but nevertheless she takes medication and changes her diet, getting of the all-fruit diet and cutting back diary products.
When her condition doesn’t go away, she gets a recommendation to visit psychiatrist. The problem with her mind is a reason for the illness. Carol finally understands the necessity, which requires of her to go to a place, where people who suffer from toxic allergies and those with AIDS can ‘clean’ themselves, and, probably, the only place where she can feel safe.
As the plot develops, it becomes clear that the treatment, received at hospital, is improper and probably, only worsens the situation. Haynes’s idea was to show the powerlessness of traditional medical science against new illnesses, caused by external irritants, but destroy humans from inside. In the film, Carol combats a real ten-headed hydra, which responds to the new treatment courses with new painful fits of allergy.
Carol drives her car – and endures a coughing fir; she breathes in her new perfumes –and feels lightheadedness. Aerobic classes, which pursue a goal of helping her relax, are initially doomed to be unsuccessful: she has never had tension in her life, she has never had close relations, so there was no ground for either extremely positive or extremely negative emotions in her life. Thus, she cannot relax, because she never experiences stresses in pure medical meaning.
Moreover, the medicaments Carol receives are irritants, as they also consist of toxins or other synthetic substances. On the contrary, Dunning chooses a different direction and creates some kind of cult, or community with certain beliefs, values and philosophy. People living there find there attachment and new system of coordinates, in which it is possible to consider their illness and cope with related inner problems.
It is possible to notice that by the end of the movie, she becomes increasingly more shattered, and probably her sickness breaks her and makes her re-evaluate the relationships which had existed in her life before she fell ill. She has a husband, bad hasn’t given birth to children, because Carol ‘endures’ the existence of a domestic plant, which should be carefully watered and supplied with the necessary nourishment, but whose opinion weighs like any plant’s opinion.
It is possible to note that her first steps were determined (or, at least, highly influenced) by her husband. To my view, her sickness is a force which makes her re-think her existence and understand that she had had only ‘mechanical’ relationship with her husband, who even doesn’t try to understand her and empty conversations with her friends, carpenter and drycleaner.
The scene, which reinforce her sense ‘of nobodiness’ is one where she looks at her husband from the bed and asks ‘Where am I? At the moment?’. He answers that she is in Carol and Greg’s house, but she begins to cry, because this lush house has never belonged to her as well as her own life.
