CAROL: Les Be Honest

Director: Todd Haynes
Writer: Phyllis Nagy
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, John Magaro
Runtime: 118 mins.
2015

As far as I can tell there are two ways for people to develop empathy: through experience and through stories. For those who lead sheltered existences, sometimes life experience is not a viable option. That's why we need narrative. Stories allow for cultural growth across demographics and situations. Stories shape our worldview, especially if they're artfully constructed and have real heart behind them. As such, I can't imagine how anyone could walk away from Carol without a great deal of empathy for the LGBTQ movement unless they are trapped in a dogma that does not allow them to break free.

Carol follows the romance of two closeted women in the 1950's. Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is our initial POV character, a reserved young woman who floats through life acquiescing to things she doesn't have any feelings about. Over the course of the movie our perspective transfers to that of Carol Aird (Cate Blachett), an older woman going through a divorce and entering a custody battle for her daughter. Both of our main characters are stuck in relationships with basically good men who nonetheless find themselves in the role of the oppressor because of the regressive gender norms of the time. One of the many incredible traits of Carol is that it doesn't demonize anybody, not even its villain; the pressure and prominence of social forces is always kept at the forefront.


Therese and Carol are romantically interested in each other. That should be apparent to anybody who walks into this movie knowing anything about it. The real pleasure of this story lies in watching these two characters navigate their attraction to each other. The 50's may have been a time of idealized Americana, but it was a treacherous minefield for any person who stood out as different. A great deal of Carol is communicated subtextually, through minor glances and ambiguous gestures. One tremendous advantage of film over theater is its ability to maximize the subtlest of gestures by zooming in and stretching them over an enormous screen. Carol takes full advantage of that boon.

Of course, you need a pair of gifted performers to have a convincing conversation in gestures rather than words. Blanchett and Mara certainly rise to the occasion. Therese functions as something of a cipher, so Mara arguably has the easier role of the two, not because Mara doesn't need to bring anything to the character, but because she has a lot of freedom with what she chooses to bring. She plays Therese as a fairly strange woman, odd enough to perplex the male suitors in her life, but not enough to put them off entirely. Her character arc has to do with not knowing exactly what she wants from a world that has always resisted telling her what is possible.

Breaking her out of that rut is Cate Blanchett's Carol, a character of an almost absurd amount of complexity. Blanchett is operating on so many levels that our understanding of Carol and our sympathy for Carol are both in a state of perpetual flux. Is she taking advantage of Therese or is her affection genuine? Does she care at all for her husband or does she hate his guts? Is her personal life more important to her than her family life or vice versa? Is she a straight shooter or an inveterate fibber? A hundred questions like these flicker about our consciousness until we come to realize that she is simply a complex human being with nuanced triumphs and failures just like the rest of us. It helps that Blanchett is the sort of actor who can suggest the existence of massive internal worlds with nothing more than a slight droop of her eyelids.

These two brilliant performances would have been squandered were it not for Todd Haynes' masterful framing of every interaction. Each scene is shot and edited for maximum subtext and interpersonal tension. More than any other that I can think of, this movie has aced the technique of placing its audience right in the heat of words unspoken. Conversations are intimate, and we are planted in the perspective of the two protagonists* such that we are, along with them, prompted to unravel the puzzle of gestural coding in order to discover the true feelings of everybody involved. Perhaps we can already guess at those true feelings in many cases, but a great deal of the pleasure comes from immersion in how the game is played.

*In a neat narrative trick, Therese is our perspective character for about half of the movie, only to slowly shift to Carol without our really realizing it.

The standout scenes all involve interactions between Therese and Carol, but every single snippet of the film is compelling and propulsive no matter who is featured onscreen. The performances of the main characters aren't the only tools used to elicit empathy from the audience. Haynes also does a great job of framing the two protagonists using the bodies of men. Whether it is Therese being thrust into masculine-dominated social environments, or Carol being herded into a vehicle by her husband, the men in this film eat up the screen every time they are allowed to intrude, making us feel downright claustrophobic. We've seen glimpses of the true emotional realities of our protagonists, which makes it all the more difficult to watch them be pigeonholed into decorative, reductive social roles.

I would be remiss if I weren't to mention the film's score, perhaps the most powerful cinematic tool for eliciting empathy. I wouldn't even know how to begin singing its praises beyond insisting upon its gutwrenching beauty. Carter Burwell's music sweeps through Carol making sure that every single dramatic and emotional beat lands like a nuclear warhead.

Had I seen Carol in time for consideration on my Top Ten List, it surely would have stormed all the way to a number two or three spot. Even if I had a couple of fingers sliced off, I would still be able to count on my deformed hand the number of 2015 films that affected me as profoundly as Carol. Even if soulful romances aren't typically your thing, let Carol be an experiment in opening yourself up to fresh experiences.

4.5 / 5  BLOBS