I remember exactly where I was when I first watched Todd Haynes’ remarkable film, Safe, starring Julianne Moore. I had been home in Los Angeles for maybe two months, deep in quarantine. I was so estranged from the outside world. I slept in the same hoodie and sweatpants for weeks. I hadn’t even stepped in my backyard. I was stuck in a perpetual state of agony. That was two years ago. It was a rocky year. Earlier that year, I had my first and only seizure, which paralyzed me with fear that it would happen again, and that I was solely out of control. It took time, especially with the support of my parents, to take my life much more seriously and accommodate myself into this new world and situate myself as a real person and not this half-zombie. I got therapy and learned to built trust in myself and that not being in control was okay. But mostly, that my body was mine. Autonomy was my strength. I felt everything again later that summer.
Rewatching Safe, was cathartic. I didn’t feel estranged. Instead, I felt more intrinsically connected to the film. I felt and remembered what Carol White’s (Julianne Moore) pain might have been. It’s cast by such a ghostly performance and haunted by an otherworldly camera that the pain or anxiety is so indescribable, it’s absolutely insane. My pain and anxiousness and depression and the isolation of early pandemic times really resonated once again. I could track the self-destruction, unhappiness, search for self, the perilous journey, and breakthrough happening on-screen. Julianne Moore is remarkable and electrifying, and yet so devastatingly quiet.
Todd Haynes tables the eerie creep of autoimmunity so well, it is frightening. I would casually categorize this film as horror if I could because it does have its moments. The suffocation here reminds me of experiences of my own. But there’s so much more: issues over domesticity, environmentalism, toxic masculinity, autoimmunity, and the subtle indications of metaphorical loneliness of the AIDS dread, paints this film a modern masterpiece. It’s slow but intentional. It tantalizingly drags on.
The film isn’t universally queer, despite director Todd Haynes being openly gay, but the film can most definitely be understood and examined as non-identity based. I would also like to add its likeness to now and how the film has captured grief feeling from its gay director and a prophetic examination of liminal spaces and the environmental isolation of being struck with an illness. Carol harboring away with a community that feels almost ‘home’ is anything but ‘home’. She is alone. She has left everything behind. She has been left without any reassurance. Is there life outside of her encampment? Away from herself. Or is she already dead, somewhere inside; maybe even metaphysically?
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