When Far from Heaven opened in 2002, audiences could believe they had traveled back nearly 50 years to 1957, when the film is set. But Todd Haynes' melodrama is not just a period feature; it is in many ways a period production. Inspired by Douglas Sirk’s fifties melodramas (All That Heaven Allows, Magnificent Obsession), Haynes conceived his film as a long lost piece of film history. While the story of a housewife (Julianne Moore) who, after discovering her husband (Dennis Quaid) is cheating on her with other men, turns to their African-American gardener (Dennis Haysbert) for solace and possible romance, might be too racy for a fifties audience, many of its elements (class envy, racial distinctions, oppressive suburban mores, etc.) were woven into Sirk’s work. And the look and feel was pitch perfect. Cinematographer Ed Lachman used equipment and techniques common to that era. Production designer Mark Friedberg took his cues as much from such films as from real fifties design The composer Elmer Bernstein (in what would be his final score) drew on his personal experience working on films from that period. And while such techniques had been used previously for satire and parody, Haynes' melodrama was perfectly sincere in its artificiality. "When most people see films set in the '50s today,” Haynes told ArtForum, "there's an immediate sense of superiority. It's all about the myth that as time moves on, we become more progressive." But Haynes wanted to take the period and its genre seriously, as well as the emotion generated by melodrama. And critics agreed with him, as his film garnered four Oscar nominations and was named the Best Film of 2002 by The Village Voice’s critics poll.