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The making of Michael Winterbottom’s “In this World,” about Afghan refugees fleeing their war-torn homeland for a life in the West, is as extraordinary as the movie itself. The production notes detail the tortuous, and often extremely risky nature of Winterbottom’s endeavor, given the region’s virulent anti-Americanism following 9/11 and the ensuing turmoil in Afghanistan.

In casting their movie, Winterbottom found two remarkable boys, Jamal Udin Torabi and Enayatullah Jumaudin, both non-actors, to play the leads. Of course, neither spoke much English, and securing visas for them, let alone the production’s filming permits was another grueling matter entirely.

That Winterbotton was able to pull this venture off at all is remarkable. That “In this World” is one of this year’s strongest movies is sweet redemption. It’s an unusually powerful testament to what one is willing to suffer and endure for a chance at the kind of life that you and I take for granted. The story is simple: an Afghan family engages the services of human traffickers to get two teenage cousins away from their digs in Peshawar, Pakistan to brighter prospects in London. The boys set off, not knowing who to trust nor how to communicate in the myriad of languages they encounter, on foot, in jeeps, buses, freighters, from one halfway house to another, thus, joining the millions of refugees who annually risk their lives in the trek for freedom.

Jamal and Enayatullah (they use their own names in the movie) are a naïve but reslient
pair. We know little about them, but, in following their journey and the rapport they develop, Winterbottom manages, with minimal dramatic artifice, to engage our sympathies. We feel not just for them but for all the desperate souls the movie happens upon, including a young couple with a baby who stow away with the boys, alongside fellow refugees, inside a shipping container. In the darkness, their terror and anxiety for the baby rise through what becomes a harrowing forty-hour sea passage. Most disturbing is the knowledge that the fate of such people is, in the end, lost, their voices never heard, in our vast tide of anonymous suffering and exploitation.

For all its effect, “World” is an amazingly utilitarian work. Winterbottom employs a gritty, restless, documentary style and a juggernaut pace that seems, on principle, to eschew emotionalism and sticks with the raw, physical record of the journey. Indeed, outside of Dario Marianelli’s haunting score, “World” is short on artful lyricism, on obvious sentiment. The actors are compelling in their very unactorliness; they force us to come to them, to see that it’s in their tired, bedraggled faces that the movie’s message is written. “In this World” may be too fidgety to be poetry. It hews too close to life for that, accomplishing, instead, a daring, thought-provoking immediacy.

Grade: A

Directed by: Michael Winterbottom
Written by: Tony Grisoni
Cast: Jamal Udin Torabi, Enayatullah, Imran Paracha

Todd Haynes’ latest film takes place in dreamy 1950s Connecticut, a world of well-tended lawns and spacious, leaf-dappled avenues. In terms of production design, Far From Heaven is all-out perfection, with its Rockwellian portrait of postwar America, flush with the hues of New England’s seasons and the proud veneer of American prosperity.

Haynes styles Far From Heaven after the campy, high-gloss tearjerkers of Douglas Sirk. With its striking color tones, canted close-ups and beautifully lush score, he craftily pays tribute to that master of 50s-era melodrama.

Cathy Whittaker (Julianne Moore) is, by all appearances, a perfect wife to Frank (Dennis Quaid), her successful, charming husband and a perfect mother to two well-bred children. Living in their tidy, well-burnished home, the Whitakers are emblematic of pure “Ozzie & Harriet” Americana.

Once Haynes shatters that veneer, however, hidden truths and desires come pouring out. After a late-night contretemps in Frank’s office, he admits to Cathy his homosexuality and plods off to a psychiatrist to “cure” himself. With her marriage now adrift, Cathy finds herself emotionally drawn to Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), a black gardener.

Cathy’s indiscrete friendship with Raymond arouses outrage among her town’s self-righteous gossip-mongers, while Frank struggles to come to terms with his sexual crisis. In effect, Haynes gives conservative America a double dose of anathema: interracial love and homosexuality. Fortunately, he explores his themes with enough humor and visual flair to keep from descending into heavygoing drama.

The heart of this film is Julianne Moore, marvelously scaling that range from silly, Sirkian camp to nuanced, genuinely-earned pathos. Moore perfectly pitches her performance, seamlessly going from gently satiric to deeply affecting, as Cathy transitions from the carefree homemaker and society darling to the abandoned woman and society cast-off.

Moore is well-matched with Dennis Haysbert whose Raymond projects an easy, composed charm and the dignity of a man trying to make a decent living while hemmed in by the expectations of not just whites but the blacks in his own community. Their scenes have a quiet, revealing eloquence.

The one false note comes from Dennis Quaid. One senses a tentative, halting quality in his performance, and, in conveying his inner pain, Quaid settles for a glowering, grunting presence, constipated with shame, lust or too much whiskey.

To be fair, Haynes’ script underdevelops Frank’s character. Indeed, every opportunity for Quaid to mine his character for deeper layers falters simply for lack of material. A scene in which Frank makes a startling confession to Cathy begins brilliantly, but eventually peters out with Quaid sobbing and yammering, and the scene dies in his hands soon afterwards.

Far From Heaven’s campy stylistic framework can’t accommodate the weighty, poignant truths that must be expressed between the estranged and the heartbroken to allow for a satisfying resolution. Instead, we conclude with a series of half-baked scenes that dramatically fall apart and a style that clashes with the richness and sincerity of Moore’s performance. Still, Haynes’ revisionist melodrama is a barbed and funny enough social satire, so visually ripe and with such a commanding showcase for Moore, that it manages to be an affecting experience.

Grade: B

Written/Directed by: Todd Haynes
Cast: Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert, Patricia Clarkson, Viola Davis, Celia Weston, Michael Gaston