LOOK OF A WINNER
Actors mesmerize without saying a word in the sublime new film, Carol.
Carol Rating: Starring: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara Director: Todd Haynes Duration: 118 minutes
You would swear, after watching Carol, that Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are the last two surviving members of some ancient tribe that communicated solely with longing glances. In the Todd Haynes film, more happens between the two of them just sitting in a booth waiting for lunch to arrive than most other movies manage in their full two hours. Carol is the rare film that couldn’t just get away with being silent, but could probably also be just as engrossing completely still — just sitting there, watching Mara and Blanchett watch each other, each desperately eager to find out what all this looking is going to lead to.
All this gazing is not without good reason. Taking place in a muted and slightly fuzzy 1950s New York — Haynes uses repeated shots of characters looking through foggy or rain-streaked windows, a dreamy tone that infects the entire look of the film — Carol is a story of what happens when our desires can’t be spoken, and especially the toll that takes in a world where such desire is deeply fraught.
In the beginning, things remain unspoken as much because they are unknown as unwelcome. When Therese (Mara) first catches a glimpse of Carol (Blanchett) across the floor of the department store where Therese works, she is a vision of society glamour: lush furs billowing down to the floor, hair and ruby lips just so, Carol lingers over a train set, maybe aware of being noticed, maybe just forever in a state of radiant charisma.
By the time she saunters over to the desk, to ask about a doll, there’s a magnetic buzz between them, and Therese, looking naively elfin in her store-supplied Santa hat, stares at Carol like a moth looks at flame, entranced but unsure.
By the time they have lunch together — thanks to what seems to be a ruse by Carol involving some forgotten gloves — Therese looks ready to set herself on fire, if it means getting close enough, and yet still can’t quite bring herself around to the full idea of it. Talking later to her sweet but thoroughly lunkish boyfriend (Jake Lacy), she asks about same-sex relationships so earnestly you know she is questioning their possibility to herself, trying to reconcile the magnetic attraction she feels with the fact she didn’t know it could exist (with anyone, it seems, let alone a woman).
Carol prefers the looks because she knows exactly how fraught things can be once you open your mouth. In the midst of a divorce with her increasingly embittered husband Harge (Kyle Chandler), she is soon facing the prospect of having her daughter taken away under threats of a morality clause.
Harge knows what Carol was up to with her friend Abby, just as he knows what’s up when he sees Therese plunking away at a piano in the home they still share. Unequipped to understand, he’s trying to blackmail his wife out of her very person.
Carol’s experience, though, makes her, if not quite the aggressor, the one more willing to stop all the staring and speak. Beyond her glove trick, she all but leads Therese to water. Her self-possession in everything — even her lunch order is so casually confident that Therese just repeats it — is a sort of north star, guiding her in. If Therese’s looks are curious and furtive, Carol knows exactly what all these glances mean.
Things do eventually move well past mere looks. And though I don’t know that it’s possible for the movie to get better, it does get fuller: Therese and Carol start to infect each other, Carol’s confidence filling Therese like a balloon, Therese’s raw curiosity filling Carol’s sails.
Their looks become tender and knowing, and their growing love is both exhilarating and lived-in, which makes it all the more poignant when the inevitable doom rolls in. (All the best romances really are, of course, doomed.) Their last look is as horrible as the first is hopeful, but the power remains the same. That so much beauty, wonder and terror can live just in these actresses’ eyes is certainly something to see.