“Far From Heaven,” featuring a score by Elmer Bernstein, has been chosen as the closing film of the 3rd Annual Woodstock Film Festival and will feature a Q&A following the screening Sunday, September 22. Director Todd Haynes will share the dais with Bernstein and protégé Cynthia Millar, who played piano in the score.

The film stars Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert. It is set in the 1950s and depicts the beautiful, yet oppressive surfaces of middle-class, mid-century America. It is reminiscent of the films of Douglas Sirk, a popular director during the era, and whose films were renowned for their rich look and empathetic characters.

“‘Far From Heaven’ is a film made by Todd Haynes with a very strong concept,” states Bernstein. “It is a film about conventional mores of the fifties. Todd Haynes’ idea was to treat this film to look as films about interpersonal relationships looked in the fifties. Conventional wisdom of the fifties indicated that homosexuality was an illness susceptible to treatment by psychiatry and, needless to say, a normal friendship with a person of another race was unthinkable. The score for this film also reflects some fifties sensibilities in its open romanticism and delicacy.”

Click here to read the Woodstock Times article.