[CRITICAL] CAROL

The pitch : In the New York of the 1950s, Therese, a young employee of a large retail store Manhattan, makes the acquaintance of a client distinguished, Carol, seductive woman, trapped in a marriage little happy. The spark of the first meeting was quickly succeeded by a feeling more profound. The two women find themselves soon trapped between the conventions and their mutual attraction.

The beautiful scene of the introduction already shows the issues of each party : those of the viewer, the characters, the director.

It follows a man in the streets of New York, and then to the interior of an elegant building. The score by Carter Burwell (official composer of the COEN) requires as soon as the first minute, a powerful theme – very melodramatic, but ultra-powerful. A certain academism is released of this music, immediately counter-balanced at the moment where the man immiscera in a conversation between two women in a restaurant.

A decisive moment or we become aware of our burst within of something extremely intimate, though never expressed otherwise than by looks full of a sense incomprehensible. So, we understand that it will not be that of classic melodrama, but a film where the suggestion and subtlety define the interactions, and by extensions of the characters themselves.

Todd Haynes also notes, from this introduction, that it will be a look of a man on a history of women… But far from an observation voyeuristic homosexuality, it will decode this powerful feeling hidden in the unsaid ; to understand what are these two women the one for the other.

So it is with a narrative logic from the outset to be justified, that we go back to the very beginning of their history.

Here, the second vector of empathy takes full life : immersion in their daily lives. Successively, Todd Haynes presents them via a reconstruction of context-sensitive actual mind-blowing. This is not only a matter of scenery ; the historic searched, but not explicit, attitudes, dialogues, moods, costumes, make-up… The art direction is ultra-precise and composed on every aspect, with a care freak, a fetishist. Recently, only Grand Budapest Hotel and Mad Max Fury Road are able to bluff with such a level of detail.

Once this scene and this atmosphere placed, a natural source of the context : a society, radicalising the relationship. Todd Haynes has clearly understood that the environment of these women shape their personalities and their relationship to their own feelings ; Carol and Therese did not have the right to love. Neither legally, nor morally, nor in any other way. This obviously does not prevent their love from being installed both outside and inside of this context, in homosexuality, it is… But in total accord with the mores, conventions and taboos of the era, homosexuality, he will never openly question. A fact that Carol, Therese, but also ALL the other characters were perfectly integrated, preventing or preventing the expression sentimental contraindicated. Hence, the importance of burying his emotions, and communicate exclusively by the non-said #ouroboros

“A controlled work end-to-end, subject to his achievement, through his actors. Beautiful.”

The actresses (and also actors), directed with a precision unheard of, raise in us the emotion through their perfect game, their interaction with both taiseuses and expressive.

Cate Blanchett made a character close in his attitudes distinguished, Blue Jasmine from Woody Allen.

But the point of excess here, a point of madness. Carol is a woman who has to hide his emotions, so strong they are. His drama is to love women – but also his family, of being self-conscious, and above all, to know exactly what will be the consequences of each of its decisions. Face it, Rooney Mara is Therese, in young, but not naive nor ingenuous, charismatic by its silences, seductive finer than it to the air. At the beginning of the film, it seems to be a “victim”… But in reality, each character is fully aware of its impact on those who surround him. The tragedy is built parallel to the love, in this desire to control that is a search for the man on the woman, and in the research antagonistic, a freedom impossible.

All this, of course, worn by a not-always says as pest. We also appreciate, to find Kyle Chandler in a new role of emotion in reentry (after Bloodline)

In the end, CAROL is a total work, where each aspect is demonstrating an exceptional mastery.

However, this mastery would be nothing without something strong. Here it is, a beautiful love story, and then a speech of timeless on the woman and his desire for a liberation from the yoke of men.

AGREE ? NOT AGREE ?

THE OTHER OUTPUTS OF THE 13 JANUARY 2016

Carol, Creed, Bang Gang, And your sister, A Second Chance, The boy and the beast, etc

(article dated 19 may 2015)