Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.
Last week we talked about polygamy and homosexuality in Big Love, all the while singing Chloe Sevigny’s praises. This week, we focus on the “genius” Todd Haynes, who's obviously on our minds what with our infatuation with Carol. HBO, as we’ve seen, has always celebrated and supported out gay filmmakers, from Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Common Threads, The Celluloid Closet) and Cheryl Dunye (Stranger Inside) to Gus Van Sant (Elephant) and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under). It makes sense that Haynes’s adaptation of Mildred Pierce, led by the incomparable Kate Winslet found a home at the cable network.
We could spend all day gabbing about this languid adaptation but I’ll keep it short and sweet today with 5 Reasons Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce is deliciously gay...
5. Its source material (and the looming noir shadow of one Miss Joan Crawford). One of my favorite books of cultural criticism is David Halperin’s How to be Gay which is basically a book-length tome on gay men’s fascination with Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce which Halperin reads as a metaphor for gay male culture.
“Veda’s revolt against the family is not merely against its values, but against the very conditions of and norms of heterosexual femininity.”
4. Guy Pearce. With (and without) his short shorts.
3. Anne Roth’s fabulous costume designs. Steering clear of Crawford’s angular outfits, Roth gives Haynes’s miniseries a lovingly earthy look and feel. I particularly love Mildred’s golden dress which is just exquisite, equal parts dowdy and extravagant.
2. Evan Rachel Wood’s opera scene. Cher, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, J. Smith-Cameron, Cate Blanchett: I do love a good scene at the opera with actressing that matches the grand sensibilities of that fey classic art form. Winslet doesn’t disappoint.
1. Haynes. It’s not just that he’s an out gay director; his sensibility, as his filmography clearly shows, is steeped in a gay aesthetic. In Emily Nussbaum’s words, Mildred Pierce “feels a bit like Black Swan, only told from the maternal POV, with chicken and waffles instead of pink cake” which is just a great distillation of the operatic and feminine sensibility that so runs through this six hour miniseries. “You sigh over every dress. Even a close-up of restaurant workers chopping chickens feels like a waltz.” This is gay sensibility made flesh. Or rather, made film.
Fun Awards Fact: We all know Kate giddily won everything in sight, but I was saddened to remember that Haynes’s miniseries went up against the juggernaut that was Downton Abbey in its first season (which was submitted as a miniseries and thus hogged a lot of those categories). In hindsight, the win for Downton over Mildred Pierce as Best Miniseries, and perhaps more infamously, of Brian Percival (of The Book Thief fame) as Best Director over Haynes, Olivier Assayas (for Carlos), Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini (for Cinema Verite; discussed here) and Curtis Hanson (for Too Big Too Fail) is too much to bear.
Next Week: We keep revisiting visionary auteurs as they dip their toes in cable network productions with the lavish Steven Soderbergh Liberace film Behind the Candelabra (Watch on HBO Go & Amazon Video) starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon. Spoiler alert: I have a lot of issues with this beautifully lensed film.