Carol (2015): What Am I Missing?

Carol, the new movie starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, from director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven [2002]), has been widely praised by a majority of established film critics, most of whom have called it one of the top movies of 2015. Sight & Sound ranked Carol as the number two movie of the year, based on a poll of 168 reviewers. It received the year’s highest critical rating on Metacritic.com (96/100), a site that translates reviews from a multitude of reviewers (43 in this case) into numerical scores.  It will likely be nominated for multiple Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress(es) and Best Director.

Kenneth Turan in the L.A.Times described Carol as "swooningly beautiful” and “completely intoxicating.” The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw also described it as “intoxicating“ as well as “creamily sensuous” and “an outstandingly intelligent movie.” Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called it “a beautiful film”.  Peter Travers, in Rolling Stone, said the movie is  “a romantic spellbinder that cuts deep.”

I found a lot to admire in Carol and agree with many of these superlatives. It is a film worth seeing, for sure. Ultimately, however, I felt that the movie let me down.  I’ll explain why in a minute. First, I’ll tell you what I enjoyed and appreciated.

Carol succeeds beautifully in creating and sustaining a mood that combines nostalgia, sensuality, and an interesting combination of  anticipation and apprehension, a mood that envelopes the viewer from the very first moments. Like most of Haynes’ films, this one is set in the past, in this case 1951. Characteristically, he and his team have recreated the milieu of this period with painstaking accuracy – the vehicles, the furnishings, the dress, the hairstyles, and so on. Its perfection in this regard is diverting. The sensual mood relates to the love story between two women, but is not limited to that.  It starts with the softly lit, warm hued cinematography, abetted by a lush, evocative score, and attaches to everything we see: the exquisite fabrics, the perfect hair, lipstick, clothes, the women’s glowing skin, the exquisite, yet muted palette of the rooms they inhabit and the clothes they wear. Haynes, his art director and his cinematographer, Edward Lachman (who also teamed with him for Far From Heaven) have created an idealized vision, but it is really lovely.

The story in outline is quite simple: A beautiful middle-aged suburban matron (Carol, played by Blanchett), falls for a beautiful, much younger woman (Therese, played by Mara), who she first sees working as a saleswoman in an upscale department store. A love affair develops,  but it is constrained by societal taboos and impeded by Carol's personal circumstances.

Carol has been involved with a woman before - her best friend, Abby (Sarah Paulson), and she is estranged from her husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), who isn’t taking it well. The implication is the close-mindedly oppressive, homogenous attitudes of the time are to blame.  Therese has been presumptively heterosexual, but her boyfriend has no interesting characteristics other than decent looks and a good paying job. That may have been a stereotypically acceptable resume at that time, but not for Therese.  She has artistic ambitions and is looking for a less staid life than this stick is offering. And as she becomes increasingly intrigued by the attentions of Carol, she realizes that Richard’s personal qualities may not be the issue, so much as his sex.

There is no explaining the instant attraction between these two women when they first lay eyes on each other at the department store.  A bolt of lightning, love at first sight. We see longing and desire in those eyes, as Carol and Therese gaze at each other across the Christmas-bedecked toy department, holding their respective gazes for an extended moment. And so it starts.

But it is not long either, before the let-down starts. I’m not talking about the characters’ experience here (I’m trying not to include any spoilers); I’m talking about the viewer’s experience – or at least mine. Notwithstanding the delicate, intoxicating performances of Blanchett and Mara, nor the movie’s sumptuous, seductive tone and style, as this love story develops, as the two women find ways to spend time with one another, the relationship between the two seems less and less convincing. Why?

Because the screenplay leans too heavily on tone, mood, and atmosphere; and while all of these elements suggest that Carol and Therese are ever more deeply in love, it’s all intimation.  Over the course of the film, this is too superficial to convince.

We are privy to precious little dialogue between the two (what there is awkward and brief), and not much in the way of incident or shared experiences.  Sexual attraction only gets you so far. If we are to believe in a deepening connection between these ladies, it would help if we could share something more than hungry looks and brief elliptical conversations. While they do take a long car trip together, mostly all we see is Therese staring out the window. So, who are these people? What do they talk about?  Do they seem to have anything in common?

We learn nothing of Therese’s backstory, and although we get to know a bit about Carol’s, it’s barely enough to thread the plot. For example [slight spoiler alert], a key piece of the story centers on Carol’s impending divorce and the threat that disclosure of her lesbian relationship could result in losing custody of her young daughter. Although we are told that Carol cherishes her daughter and her motherly role, we see the two of them together for perhaps two or three minutes total, and on the most extended occasion, Carol is preoccupied.

All this results in a quite beautiful motion picture, yet one that is emotionally hollow and unsatisfying. Haynes’ movie asks us to accept the premise of an unfathomably deep love, and identify with its protagonists’ wrenching emotional experiences, but it hasn’t earned that.  We should not have to just take it on faith.

In wide release. 118 minutes.