Carol captures nuanced performances from actresses
My Friday night began on a positive note, with an advanced screening of Carol. I wasn’t the only one looking forward to it: the theater reached capacity and two women started verbally fighting over seats. The night might not have been so great for the inflamed patrons who expected that their online reservation would guarantee a spot in the notoriously tiny Ray Stark Theater but was favorable for the filmmakers, whose painstaking attention to detail, evident from the very beginning of the film, should be justly rewarded with eager audience members and packed seats.
Carol opens on a patterned sewer grate and tracks upward through the quiet, rain-slicked street that firmly plants us in 1950s New York City. From there, we find shelter inside the posh hotel lobby that introduces us to a luxurious world where a fedora-clad man declares, “Not much happening tonight.” This is just the fashion we will come to expect from most of the men throughout the film.
Indeed, “not much happening tonight” acts as an ironic juxtaposition, for just a few seats over sits Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) and Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) who are interrupted when both the camera and an obliviously loud male patron intrude on what is a clear moment of high tension. The movement from raw city streets to the plush, sophisticated interior also acts as a metaphor for the journey Therese is about to embark on, as a girl who begins as scrappy and unpolished and evolves into a refined, assured woman. Carol is the story of young shop girl Belivet’s affair with Aird, a wealthy suburban housewife who’s embroiled in a painful divorce from her husband Harge Aird (Kyle Chandler). Things become tricky when the women’s relationship begins to interfere with Carol’s custody over her daughter — Harge cites a “morality clause” during the divorce negotiations and claims that he loves his wife so deeply he’d rather fragment the family even more than free Carol and let her live as her true self.
None of this information should be read as a spoiler; any trailer of the film will tell you as much. And it’s knowing where a lot of the brilliant moments and tension are that pontificate the greatness in the film. When Harge Aird barges into the Aird home and finds Belivet in the living room there’s a moment of great intensity, followed by a knowing, accusatory look between husband and wife that inspires a round of laughter from the audience. For even though Aird and Belivet haven’t explicitly engaged in any romantic activity yet, the drama and levity is derived from knowing and anticipating what’s to come.
But the film shouldn’t be considered a comedy by any means — the lighter moments are few and far between the dramatic, arresting scenes filled with great cinematic depth and emotion. As viewers, we explore Belivet’s newfound identity only through distance. Most shots in the film are positioned to look through things: through bridge arches and hallways, window panes and curtains, scattered trees, mirrors and even through people, creating an alienation between the viewer and protagonists that borderlines forced voyeurism.
In fact, much of the film could be taken as a statement on the inherently visual aspect of filmmaking and audience participation. The act of looking is emphasized from beginning to end, but precisely what this emphasis suggests is unclear. The notorious male gaze is one that is attributed to cinema threefold — the male gaze on the woman, the gaze imposed by the camera and the gaze attributed to the audience gazing at the woman through the camera. But with Carol, we have Todd Haynes — an openly gay filmmaker — telling a story about women where men are the nuisances, dismissed and disgusting. This situation does call for further analyzation.
Maybe the calculated shots were for a purpose, and maybe they were simply because they are aesthetically gorgeous to view — the brilliance of Carol lies in the fact that it doesn’t overtly try to tell you anything. The story itself is a slow burn; its deliberate and meticulous unfurling of the plot lets the viewer soak in every moment, every slight brush of gloved hands and piercing glance between protagonists. The characters dance around the explicit, and even though that type of vagueness would lend itself to an audience’s propensity for frustration, there isn’t a single scene misplaced or ill-advised. Past events, such as Carol’s first affair with another woman, are alluded to, but never outrightly described. It’s in this conscious storytelling that Carol shines as a film, among action blockbusters and animated sequels, and it becomes clear that you won’t come across a similar one very soon.
Carol was a selection at the Cannes, AFI and Rome Film festivals this past year, and it’s clear why. Not only is the direction beautifully executed, but the production design is spot on, the costumes delightfully period appropriate and the dialogue precise yet not obvious. The acting is also pitch perfect — save for one misstep in the casting of Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein, who emerges at the end as more of an overt token character than a nuanced choice. The beauty in Carol up until that point had been in the fact that stereotypes or broad generalizations of gay communities or individuals were next to nil. Furthermore, right up until Belivet and Aird kiss, it’s unclear what either’s intentions are for each other or themselves. Carol’s best friend Abby (Sarah Paulson) is also gay, but isn’t played in any garish way that would suggest her preference.
The subtlety with which these characters are portrayed is where the film truly transcends. This rare exploration of a marginalized group is especially fascinating considering it takes place during a time where the suburban nuclear family seems to be the only way of life. This is the same landscape that holds films such as Sam Mendes’s Revolutionary Road and AMC’s series Mad Men as the definitive examples of life in the times. But with Haynes’s Carol, we have a new film to reference, a masterful work within the cinematic lexicon, not to be missed.
Minnie Schedeen is a junior majoring in cinematic arts and critical studies. Her column, “Film Fatale,” runs every Tuesday.