Todd Haynes’ ‘Safe’ saw Julianne Moore’s most flawless performance
Every single time Julianne Moore appears in a movie, you can be almost certain that what arrives on screen will be a masterclass of acting. After all, Moore has proven her talent and prowess in a wide range of film roles, whether in small independent dramas or big-budget blockbusters, leading to a reputation of genuine brilliance and a host of award nominations and wins.
Moore has a certain knack for playing emotionally troubled women and has carved out a niche kind of performance for herself. For instance, in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, she played an adulterous wife, while Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights saw her portray a drug-addicted porn star in the throes of grief after having her son taken away from her following a court battle loss against her former husband.
Elsewhere, she had played an unhappy housewife in both Far from Heaven and The Hours, a wealthy and sexually determined artist in The Big Lebowski, and a woman criticised and imprisoned for starting a relationship with a teenage student in May December. Simply put, Moore has never shied away from the more difficult roles, and even as far back as her effort in Todd Haynes’ 1995 film Safe, it was clear that the North Carolina-born actor was a serious talent.
In fact, it’s perhaps her performance in Haynes’ psychological horror-drama that serves as the time that Moore achieved absolute perfection even though the role was one that required a striking amount of poise and dedication. Safe saw Moore play Carol White, an affluent late-1980s suburban housewife who suddenly develops a strange illness that she believes is caused by her environment.
Carol’s seemingly perfect life is thrown into disarray, and days spent shopping, doing exercise classes and eating at expensive restaurants are replaced with those struggling to breathe, having random nosebleeds and suffering extreme anxiety. When Carol’s husband’s feeble attempts are unfruitful and perhaps even seem to be contributing to her illness, she leaves her home for a retreat to a new-age community where people also suffering from “environmental illnesses” are living free from technological and chemical interference.
Moore’s performance as Carol is simply stunning. She is capable of showing the idyllic life that the housewife is adorned with, going about her days with a stereotypical prim-and-properness, but when the disease begins to take root in her character, Moore can tap into her deepest anxieties and highlight the disinterest of her husband.
In preparing the cast for Safe, Haynes had thought about giving the lead role of Carol to Linda Norman, who eventually took the part of Linda. At this point, Moore’s agent contacted producer Christine Vachon and demanded an audition for the actor, who felt that she knew precisely how to play the character from the moment she read the script. When Moore played Carol by not putting “any weight on her larynx” at all in the audition, she was immediately given the part.
Indeed, Moore simply understood how to play Carol, and it absolutely shows in what we see on screen. Carol is at once sympathetic and yet somehow annoying, which shows the depth of the character and Moore’s sheer ability. Safe is a difficult film to watch at times, but it’s an equally important one that shows us the realities of our contemporary anxieties.
Though Moore would earn the most acclaim for her efforts in Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair, Far from Heaven, The Hours and Still Alice, her performance in Safe is arguably her most complete and stands comfortably in her filmography of overall excellence as an early signifier of her true and endless talent.
