“Mildred Pierce” (Miniseries, 2011)
Having already made a latter-day Sirkian melodrama with “Far From Heaven,” Haynes doubled down on his reintroduction of the “women’s picture” lexicon to a post-2000 audience by remaking the ne plus ultra 1940s women’s picture “Mildred Pierce.” Or rather, he went back to that film’s source material, the James M. Cain novel on which it was based but from which it departed in many ways, to make a more faithful version —one that could luxuriate in a 5 ½ hour runtime and the serialized nature of a HBO miniseries format. The result is an intricate, intimate epic that is completely different in mood and even characterization from the classic Joan Crawford/Michael Curtiz movie, a fact that perhaps proved a stumbling block for some critics (how else to account for the show’s frankly baffling “rotten” RT score of 50%?). Kate Winslet‘s Mildred is Haynes’ earthiest heroine ever (far from the tigerish glamor of Crawford’s interpretation), and the setting and period trappings are more muted than in “Far From Heaven” —truer to the shabbily genteel desperation of the Depression-era middle classes than the glorious jewel tones of technicolor 1950s prosperity. It’s against this backdrop of hardscrabble reality that the stolid but eminently resourceful Mildred builds her own fortune through pie baking and 85¢ chicken dinners, after her husband Bert (a brilliant Brian F. O’Byrne) leaves her for another woman. Despite circumstances, Mildred is determined to provide her doted-on daughters with everything they need, even at the cost of her own dignity, which is hard to swallow, being predicated on an ingrained snobbery and classism that she has unwittingly passed on to her elder child Veda (Morgan Turner/Evan Rachel Wood). In fact, it has taken such deep root in Veda that, especially following the death of her younger sister, she responds to the unquestioning indulgence from her mother with growing spitefulness and disdain, masked behind a near-sociopathically manipulative exterior. Mildred does get moments of passion, especially once she meets and embarks on an affair with the dashing Monte Beragon ( a super-hot Guy Pearce) but the beauty of Haynes and Winslet’s interpretation of Mildred lies in her ordinariness (not a quality Crawford could ever pull off). It’s hard to think of too many films in which ordinariness, especially for a woman, especially in this era, is presented as such a virtue, but it means Haynes’ “Mildred Pierce” compels without ever resorting the film noir excesses of the 1940 version. In the end, it is a highly unusual and oddly satisfying process, to watch a good woman slowly, tortuously fall out of love with her own malicious child.
In addition to these titles, there are some harder-to-find shorts and TV projects that the Haynes completist may want to search out. His high-school film “The Suicide” is hard to track down in the wild (though, as a commenter points out, it is available as an extra on the Criterion release of “Safe”), while 1985’s “Assassins: A Film Concerning Rimbaud” which he made while at Brown University gets very infrequent repertory airings. However Haynes himself told FilmComment’s Nick Davis that “that’s one I can watch without squirming too much,” so there’s no reason it might not pop up as an extra on a DVD at some point.
He also directed one episode of great, gone-too-soon TV show “Enlightened,” during its second season (2×06 “All I ever wanted”), while his sole music video per se was for Sonic Youth‘s “Disappearer” that came about, as Haynes describes, as a kind of sublimation of the fact that the post-punk New York music scene and the experimental film scene were closely interrelated at that time. Plus Sonic Youth had their own Carpenters fixation (they’d later do that great cover of “Superstar” and on the “Disappearer” album, Goo, another track, “Tunic” is about Karen Carpenter) and had seen Haynes’ “Superstar” prior.
Finally, Haynes directed another musical performance, if not quite a music video, in 2013 as part of the TV documentary “Six by Sondheim.” Featuring Jarvis Cocker singing Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here” (a title that wittily mirror-images “I’m Not There,” if you’re in a meta frame of mind), the segment was also luxuriantly shot by Edward Lachman, and, as well as anyone can in 5 minutes, embodies that beautifully precise mix of arch, witty, sad and ever so slightly uncanny that Haynes can do so well. So here it is below —a nice amuse bouche to prepare you for the visual and emotional feast that is “Carol,” undoubtedly one of 2015’s finest films from undoubtedly one of America’s greatest working directors.
–with Rodrigo Perez