J Paul Johnson
Before she became one of cinema’s most recognized—and recognizable—actresses, Julianne Moore was working her way through a series of daytime soaps and supporting roles, looking for the big break that would launch her career. It came in one of the oddest but most satisfying of places, a collaboration with the then-unproven writer-director Todd Haynes and his producer, Christine Vachon. Safe, made in 1995, was Moore’s first starring role and Haynes’ second feature. It’s a role that showcased both of their unique talents: though it made few headlines and little box office upon its release, it has only grown in reputation in the decades since. The Criterion Collection continues its upgrading of catalog titles to 4K UHD discs with a new Special Edition of Spine #739, offering no new ancillary content but a fresh look at a film both of and ahead of its time.
Moore’s performance is nothing short of uncanny on several levels. Having been seen onscreen to date only in brief, smaller roles (The Had That Rocks the Cradle, Body of Evidence, Benny & Joon, The Fugitive), Robert Altman cast her in Short Cuts, with a role that required a partially nude monologue that helped her win an Independent Spirit Award and the lead in Safe. She plays Carol White, a well-to-do LA housewife in late-1980s Los Angeles, where she lives in an affluent suburb with her husband Greg, a successful businessman, and her stepson, Rory. Carol’s life is a stable, quiet menu of gardening, aerobics, and socializing, devoid of any apparent joy or conflict. Moore’s Carol is measured, balanced, polite, cautious—lacking confidence and largely without goals or ambitions of her own. The actress conveys the character’s uncertainty with a coltish hesitancy, practically a physical discomfort with her own body.
When Carol begins to display signs of a discomforting illness, she finds few answers and little empathy from those around her. First there is a coughing fit, then a nosebleed; then, soon after, a panic attack and hyperventilation, all of it with no obvious cause. Her doctor has little patience for her problems, given that tests reveal no physical condition; her husband (Xander Berkeley in an excellent supporting role) is not unsympathetic but unable to offer any real emotional support. Though Haynes’ script is unsettlingly ambiguous on the matter, Carol becomes convinced she is afflicted with severe environmental allergies, which leads her to seek help from a self-help guru whose new-age desert enclave offers community and therapy for its residents.
If this were a made-for-television malady-of-the-week plot, Safe would pin down a definitive diagnosis and prognosis for Carol. But Haynes, a maverick auteur determined to work against the grain of conventional narrative, has none of that. Carol’s symptoms are real. But their sources might be practically anything: we might all be getting environmentally ill, Safe‘s script seems to say, or Carol’s system might just be exceptionally susceptible to invisible allergens. It may be that environmental-illness guru Peter Dunning is smart and sincere, or he may simply be a charlatan taking his patients for their life savings, blaming them for their moral failings in the process. As it slowly, surely proceeds towards Carol’s inevitable isolation from people and environment, it takes on the tropes of the horror film, the antagonist unseen and nearly invisible in the narrative’s shadows.
Set in LA in 1987, Safe works more as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis—an invisible killer spreading quickly—than for the actual environmental illnesses its plot presents (which are, of course, indeed very real and afflict millions). Even Carol’s own doctor and husband can’t help but blame her for her sickness, just as many were quick to blame AIDS victims for the disease, and its sudden spread mimics that of AIDS’ onset at the time. As Carol’s condition worsens, she faces, as AIDS victims had, physical and social alienation, and self-help rituals and New-Age retreats offer no real cure.
Onscreen for all but a few seconds of screen time, Moore is simply fantastic as a woman whose world and whose body are slowly falling apart. That she is even from the film’s start largely unsympathetic is Haynes’ technique of distancing the character from the audience, but even then Moore imbues Carol with an inherent dignity and humanity that sparkles even as the character fumbles and flails through her search for a cure for her condition. Throwing herself into a radical physical transformation for the role, Moore makes Safe the film it is—convincing, unsettling, and disturbing.
Safe debuted at Sundance, where it earned mixed reactions and, reportedly, some walkouts. In a limited release that summer, it earned back only half of its million-dollar budget but generally positive reviews. Only after Haynes and Moore’s later success and the film’s thematic prescience did Safe become regarded as one of the best films of its era, even named the best film of the 1990s in a Village Voice poll. Shortly after, though, Moore was pulling down (and nailing) lead roles in all kinds of prominent films, continuing to work with other indie auteurs in Boogie Nights, The Hours, Magnolia, and The Big Lebowski, as well as mainstream blockbusters like Nine Months and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Meanwhile, Moore continued her partnership with Haynes in the affecting Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven, her ensemble role in his Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There, her dual roles in Wonderstruck, and her lead turn in May December.
Criterion presents Safe in a new 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Todd Haynes, with Dolby Vision on a triple-layer disc in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The UHD source presentation is sourced from a 4K restoration taken from a scan of the 35mm original camera negative by Criterion and lab partner Resillion. The result is impressive, with deep blacks, layered shadows, and fine-grain resolution enhancing the film’s rich textures. Its color palette remains subdued, if distinctive. The original monaural soundtrack is remastered from a 35mm magnetic track.
Additionally, a standard Blu-ray is also included and replicates the 2014 disc, including its 1080p presentation of the film—one with which I imagine few viewers would find fault—and all of its featurettes. The packaging touts the inclusion of English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and an SDH option is indeed offered on the 4K UHD disc menu, but I could not find any way to toggle subtitles on the enclosed Blu-ray disc for either the main feature or any of the supplements. If they exist, they’ll need to be set via the player’s remote, as there is no menu option to do so.
Special Features
There are no new special features on this 4K UHD edition of Safe; the special edition ports over all the extant features from the 2014 DVD and Blu-ray discs, as well as its packaging and cover art. So those who already own a copy of Criterion Spine #739 on either format will be upgrading strictly for the 4K presentation. No matter: Criterion provides a thorough and fairly exhaustive collection of featurettes focusing on Safe‘s producer, director, and star.
Audio commentary. Featuring Haynes, Moore, and Vachon, this conversation was originally recorded for a Sony Pictures Classic DVD back in 2001, then included on Criterion’s 2014 Blu-ray and DVD releases. It’s an engaging, lively interaction between the three. Moore and Haynes take the lead, with Vachon only very occasionally chiming in, but all three contribute lively anecdotes and reminiscences from a time when independent filmmaking was truly thriving—in no small part thanks to the efforts of people like Haynes, Moore, and Vachon. Safe may have originally met with little audience attention, but even by the time of this conversation’s recording some five years later, its reputation was already growing.
The Suicide. Haynes’ first film, a surreal 22-minute short shot at 17 about the suffering of a middle-school student, was thought lost until a print was found at co-producer Michael Quinn Martin’s parents’ home. It’s an impressive, almost mind-boggling piece of art for having been made by a high school senior. Shot primarily on Super 8 and 16mm, The Suicide’s fractured narrative and juxtapositions of black-and-white and color footage imitate the similar thirst for formal experimentation and themes of isolation and intense emotion he would explore later in his career. It’s a pleasure to watch. Of course, Criterion can’t provide his unauthorized Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story from a decade later, which details the singer’s battle with anorexia and bulimia with stop-motion Barbie dolls; the Carpenter estate sued, successfully, for copyright infringement. At least copies still keep popping up on YouTube, keeping the cult film alive for current and future fans.
Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore. The actor and director, who also worked together in the subsequent Far From Heaven (2002) and I’m Not There (2007), reunite nearly two decades later to reflect upon the origins of Safe and their working partnership as it later evolved in this 36-minute conversation recorded for The Criterion Collection in 2014. The lively conversation is cut with scenes from their films together and even some (grainy, lo-fi) footage of Moore testing for her part in Safe. The two are so ebullient and thoughtful in conversation I could watch them all day. It’s a reminder of when like-minded artists could—and did—collaborate regularly and intellectually on films that challenged the status quo.
Christine Vachon. Also recorded for The Criterion Collection in 2014, this interview features producer Vachon (whose books Shooting to Kill and A Killer Life are must-reads for anyone interested in the work of a producer) reflecting on her collaborations with Haynes, including their work together on Poison (1991), his first commercially released film. She and Haynes had both been at Brown University as students at the same time, but began collaborating later in New York City. At just 16 minutes, the interview feels a bit too short to fully explore the complex tensions between the film’s different viewerships, including LGBTQ+ audiences who felt the film didn’t address AIDS explicitly enough—but it’s nonetheless an engaging featurette.
If subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing are available for any of these ancillaries—and Criterion’s approach is to not provide them for English-language featurettes—there is no means of toggling them on via disc menu.
Also included is a theatrical trailer, and inside the double-disc clear jewel case packaging, a 16-page full-color booklet featuring an excellent interpretive essay, “Nowhere to Hide,” by New York Film Festival artistic director Dennis Lim and a cover designed by Jason Hardy. Altogether, Criterion’s new 4K UHD presentation of Safe is a stellar look back at a post-AIDS classic, though one that replicates the ancillary content of the Collection’s prior DVD/Blu-Ray release.
