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Rating:  - This film will linger on you
"Safe" is a paranoid tale about the "disease of the 20th century". I've seen this film twice; it is a highly acclaimed film that deserves a careful viewing. Now people will complain that nothing happens in it, and I understand that reaction. "Safe" is not plot-centered and it isn't even character-centered, but it is a film that is symptomatic of our times- which in other words means it could care less about Hollywood notions of pacing and storytelling technique.
Unlike most films, the protagonist is a passive character and this ironically demands the viewer to be more active in making sense of what's going on. Carol White experiences a harsh allergic reaction to our environment, she simply can't breathe in it anymore. She doesn't understand her disease until she arrives at a clinic commune called Wrenwood, located in the desert. Though Carol is among people suffering from her sickness, her emotional connection with the patients there is superficial and uninspiring. And this is what part of the film is about: Carol's inability to connect. She is isolated, cold and degenerating. She is emotionally vacant, helpless and vapid even before the onslaught of her disease. Her character is frustrating because she has no opinions or purpose. She is a homemaker who hires a maid to do her work.
But then there's the second part, the actual disease.
On first viewing, I thought the concept was crazy. This can't be a true epidemic. Carol White and her ailing community are filled with maniacs, people who sing schmaltzy songs about love and inner healing that can't cope in our real world. On second viewing, I was curious about the "disease". Sure enough, EI, environmental illness, does exist and I, like Carol White's husband and neighbors, just couldn't believe it. How can the immune system become so weak seemingly overnight? How can living in our environment yield such an allergic and fatal reaction? Think of the consequences of that: terrifying.
Does "Safe" predict the possibility of the end of human civilization on Earth, first experienced by highly sensitive people and then perhaps spreading to the rest of us, a full-scale epidemic of a silent killer- chemicals, toxins, all around us? The likelihood of this happening is low. But the thought of it is enough to box us in our own safe house and become paranoid, OCD recluses like Howard Hughes.
Now, I am not the paranoid type. But the possiblilty... the possiblity breaks me into shivers.
Rating: - One to ponder
I liked it. It's disturbing 'cuz there is no escaping this world... something incredibly sucky always lies at the heart of it no matter where you are or what you do. There is no "answer" but people continue to make themselves sick by searching in vain for one.
Rating:  - Complex, Ambiguous, Unsafe
Julianne Moore is magnificent in this careful and slow-moving film. The focus of almost every scene -- unusual for a female role -- she never monopolizes the screen. She even lets the furniture compete with her for attention. She thus captures the dislocation and marginalization of the wraithlike housewife "Carol" (or, as she corrects herself to her psychiatrist, "homemaker"), whose life seems central to nobody, even to herself. Although Xander Berkeley plays her sometimes frustrated husband with immense sensitivity, the sex scene between the two, very close to the beginning of the film, makes the act horrifyingly mechanical and manages to show how even the greatest intimacy can be deeply alienating. At the same time, the film is restrained; its ironies are offered so complexly that one is unsure of the point of view.
After Carol becomes seriously ill from exposure to an environment that is increasingly toxic to her, she takes refuge in Wrenwood, a holistic healing camp in the desert. The film remains uncommitted as to what part of Carol's illness is genuinely physical and what part is psychological. The philosophy offered at Wrenwood is also ambiguous, though it remains clear that the sympathy of the film is no more with New Age therapy than it was with the alienating sterility of Carol's lifestyle back in the San Fernando Valley. The film maintains this difficult balance right up to the devastating final scene.
This is not a film that was written to please the Chemical Sensitivity Movement. To read it as a political movie is a mistake.
Rating: - My wife, who is environmentally ill, was technical advisor to this movie.
My wife whose name is "Carol" the name of the main character (She goes by Lynn and is listed in the credits) got environmentally ill and almost died in the 1980's before anyone even knew what this illness was. She survived by going through a controversial program created by a doctor whose whole famiily was poisoned by a chemical spill. She remained chemically sensitive and started a non profit organization to help people like herself. Todd Haynes came to our house to go over the script to this movie to get imput from her and a Doctor she worked with who treated victims of this medical problem. She even obtained a lot of the furniture an other items used in the movie. We think the movie was well done and accurate but for the ending. We know it is not a documentary but wanted to say to all who see this movie that the people with environmental illness are not crazy and that the healer type of therapy depicted in the movie is not the cure. There are many resources now to help and this is a recognized disability caused by an accute or long term exposure to toxic chemicals which prevades all of our modern lives daily.
Rating: - Perfect
I received the DVD promptly and in very new condition.
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