Carol (2015)
Certified: 15
Duration: 118 minutes
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler, Jake Lacy, Cory Michael Smith, John Magaro, Carrie Brownstein
KRS Releasing Ltd
This adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt is a masterful film that has many facets to it and works on a multitude number of levels. It has already been nominated for five Golden Globes, including best motion picture drama, and the protagonists, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, both received a nomation in the best actress category.
The story takes place in 1950s New York and revolves around a homosexual relationship between two women and the way society looks at it.
Mara is Therese Belivet, a young woman who seems to be very ordinary and who works on a temporary basis as a sales assistant in a huge department store, selling dolls.
Carol Aird (Blanchett) is an upper class married woman who is out to get the perfect gift for her daughter Rindy (Sady and Kennedy Heim).
Therese is smitten with her and when Carol forgets her gloves, Therese uses them as a pretext for another meeting. The two are attracted to each other and soon generate a bond that will not be easy to sustain.
Around the two women there is Richard (Jake Lacey), a nice guy who is enchanted by Therese and wants her to marry him, and Carol’s husband Harge (Kyle Chandler), who knows her desires but wants to make their marriage work. In fact, he is not afraid to use his daughter as a weapon to get what he wants.
Author Highsmith is notable for her crime writing and while Carol is not a crime piece, it brims with anger, frustration, pent-up emotion and an impending fear that violence could be round the corner. It’s this fear and the feeling of being caught in blurred lines that gives the audience the feeling of walking in forbidden territory.
Haynes’s film is both a homage and a condemnation of the 1950s
Todd Haynes delivers a superlative film, one that sits alongside his beautiful Far From Heaven as Carol is made with 1950s sensibilities, in style, vision and structure. Yet the director changes the foundations of film-making and delivers a unique vision.
It’s a vision that encapsulates its characters, the style of the time, the artificial perfection aspired to and the brimming passion that was always kept under the sheets and covers in a Hollywood that had strict certification codes.
Carol is a beautiful-looking picture with a chromatic look to it that really evinces the 1950s elements.
The film is made to look picture-perfect, very much like a doll’s house. The camera turns Blanchett and Mara into symbols from another era, dressed almost as mannequins. It’s like watching Audrey Hepburn tinged with a sense of wilful angst.
Blanchett’s performance is simply divine and is sensual with her elegance. Mara comes with an almost elvish and pixie-like look. She yearns to know what is at the end of the rainbow and is not ready to take no for an answer.
Chandler is equally superlative in his role as the husband who wants to save his marriage despite knowing the truth and wants to fit in society even though he knows the rules.
The result is an emotional film, one that looks imperious and splendid but also one that shows how despite the seeming perfection, the protagonists are clueless and living a lie.
Carol is a film of many languages, one that is not simply about gay rights, it’s also about being who you are and about women who want to be considered equal to men in society.
Haynes’s film is both a homage and a condemnation of the 1950s and yet in the scenes of intimacy between the two protagonists, the film evolves to deliver feelings that are tangible and real and still relevant today.