**WARNING: Contains plot spoilers**
I don't normally write reviews but this is a case where the critics seem to be totally disconnected from what they are supposed to be reviewing. It is weird to see so little dissent in the press about this film. Carol has many good points but more bad points.
The good points are the amazing production design and costumes, and the interesting 16mm cinematography (which does get quite grainy at times). The technical side of things is fine, it looks very beautiful and old-fashioned.
The main problem is that there just isn't any emotional connection established between the two main characters, or between anyone really. The film doesn't make you care about people or their fates, and doesn't explain why they would care about each other.
The very first meeting between Carol and Therese highlights this. Carol tries to seduce Therese because... well, she just does, from the very first moment she lays eyes on her in the department store. We don't know why, Carol has never met her before so presumably it's just because Therese is young and pretty. We don't even see Carol reacting to Therese's beauty, Carol just has this predatory gaze from the very first frame, as if she was determined to find someone, anyone. How much sympathy would we feel for a middle-aged married man doing these things instead of Carol?
Because of the way the story unfolds, it is also very hard to shake the feeling that Carol is a rich person who is, in the end, able to get whatever she wants.
There ought to be sympathy for Carol being stuck in a dead marriage, but she is getting divorced and already having an affair.
There ought to be sympathy for Carol losing custody of her daughter Rindy, but we never really see the mother-daughter relationship enough to understand what this means to her. For example, in the first scene Carol buys her daughter a train set instead of a doll in order to impress the young shop assistant that she lusts after. We later see Carol playing with the train set by herself while thinking of her own problems, we never see the daughter using it. The daughter seems to be little more than a plot device or a prop.
There ought to be sympathy for gay lovers being parted by a bigoted 1950s society, but we never really see them as lovers. We see them make love, but there isn't really a scene where they display any kind of chemistry or deep affection. They come together because... well, they just do. To make matters worse, they split up almost as soon as they have got together, so we don't really get the time to feel anything significant has been lost.
The saddest part is when Carol dumps Therese so she can go to fight for her daughter's custody, but then when, thanks to her lawyer's manoeuvrings, Carol has a realistic chance of getting joint custody of her daughter, she waives her rights to it. Why? Because it means she can avoid the hassle of a nasty court case. How deep can Carol's love for Rindy or Therese really be if these are her priorities? And why tell us that the custody of Rindy means so much, more than her love for Therese, and then show her abandoning custody? Perhaps the novel explains why this makes sense, but the film certainly doesn't.
The two hour running time should have been long enough to get proper emotional connections built up, but instead the director squanders it on overextended scenes that should have been much shorter. It makes the whole film drag on without any character development.
At one point Carol's husband Hodge has a door slammed in his face, it ends on a nice shot of his partially-covered features, but it then goes on to show him walking away from the house, getting in a car and driving off. Extending the scene didn't serve any purpose, we know he's annoyed and isolated but he's been annoyed and isolated for the entire film. Another example has Carol and Therese arriving in a hotel, they enter the lobby, they enter the room, they admire the room and then... it cuts to them leaving the hotel. What did we learn about them from this? That they enjoy the decor of expensive hotels? Wouldn't, for example, adding a scene earlier in the film showing Carol doing nothing but playing with her daughter Rindy been a better way to build up the emotional stakes?
"Carol" seems to be the kind of film where the subject matter and the reputation of the participants has totally replaced objective assessment of the work itself.
Gay rights are important, Blanchett is a great actor and Haynes is a great director. "Carol" is not an important or great film though, it's telling the story of an affair without telling us why the affair happened or why we should care. Its reviews seem to be based on what "Carol" should have been, rather than what it actually is.
I don't normally write reviews but this is a case where the critics seem to be totally disconnected from what they are supposed to be reviewing. It is weird to see so little dissent in the press about this film. Carol has many good points but more bad points.
The good points are the amazing production design and costumes, and the interesting 16mm cinematography (which does get quite grainy at times). The technical side of things is fine, it looks very beautiful and old-fashioned.
The main problem is that there just isn't any emotional connection established between the two main characters, or between anyone really. The film doesn't make you care about people or their fates, and doesn't explain why they would care about each other.
The very first meeting between Carol and Therese highlights this. Carol tries to seduce Therese because... well, she just does, from the very first moment she lays eyes on her in the department store. We don't know why, Carol has never met her before so presumably it's just because Therese is young and pretty. We don't even see Carol reacting to Therese's beauty, Carol just has this predatory gaze from the very first frame, as if she was determined to find someone, anyone. How much sympathy would we feel for a middle-aged married man doing these things instead of Carol?
Because of the way the story unfolds, it is also very hard to shake the feeling that Carol is a rich person who is, in the end, able to get whatever she wants.
There ought to be sympathy for Carol being stuck in a dead marriage, but she is getting divorced and already having an affair.
There ought to be sympathy for Carol losing custody of her daughter Rindy, but we never really see the mother-daughter relationship enough to understand what this means to her. For example, in the first scene Carol buys her daughter a train set instead of a doll in order to impress the young shop assistant that she lusts after. We later see Carol playing with the train set by herself while thinking of her own problems, we never see the daughter using it. The daughter seems to be little more than a plot device or a prop.
There ought to be sympathy for gay lovers being parted by a bigoted 1950s society, but we never really see them as lovers. We see them make love, but there isn't really a scene where they display any kind of chemistry or deep affection. They come together because... well, they just do. To make matters worse, they split up almost as soon as they have got together, so we don't really get the time to feel anything significant has been lost.
The saddest part is when Carol dumps Therese so she can go to fight for her daughter's custody, but then when, thanks to her lawyer's manoeuvrings, Carol has a realistic chance of getting joint custody of her daughter, she waives her rights to it. Why? Because it means she can avoid the hassle of a nasty court case. How deep can Carol's love for Rindy or Therese really be if these are her priorities? And why tell us that the custody of Rindy means so much, more than her love for Therese, and then show her abandoning custody? Perhaps the novel explains why this makes sense, but the film certainly doesn't.
The two hour running time should have been long enough to get proper emotional connections built up, but instead the director squanders it on overextended scenes that should have been much shorter. It makes the whole film drag on without any character development.
At one point Carol's husband Hodge has a door slammed in his face, it ends on a nice shot of his partially-covered features, but it then goes on to show him walking away from the house, getting in a car and driving off. Extending the scene didn't serve any purpose, we know he's annoyed and isolated but he's been annoyed and isolated for the entire film. Another example has Carol and Therese arriving in a hotel, they enter the lobby, they enter the room, they admire the room and then... it cuts to them leaving the hotel. What did we learn about them from this? That they enjoy the decor of expensive hotels? Wouldn't, for example, adding a scene earlier in the film showing Carol doing nothing but playing with her daughter Rindy been a better way to build up the emotional stakes?
"Carol" seems to be the kind of film where the subject matter and the reputation of the participants has totally replaced objective assessment of the work itself.
Gay rights are important, Blanchett is a great actor and Haynes is a great director. "Carol" is not an important or great film though, it's telling the story of an affair without telling us why the affair happened or why we should care. Its reviews seem to be based on what "Carol" should have been, rather than what it actually is.