I wanted to like Carol. I really did. I love Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. I've always had a soft spot for Kyle Chandler. I love period pieces, especially mid-century ones--I think we all remember what I thought of Big Eyes--and I love LGBT films. And after I read all the rave reviews, and saw that Carol got a handful of Oscar nominations, I was so excited to see it. I expected a love story for the ages. I expected a film that conveyed the magic and mystery, and the pain, of first love. And with all the rage that it wasn't nominated for Best Picture, I expected...well...an Oscar-worthy film.
And I didn't get it.
Let's start with the positives: Carol is an absolutely beautiful film. It's a work of art. It really is. The nominations for cinematography, music, and costumes are well-deserved. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett kick ass as Therese and Carol, bringing a subtlety and glamour to the film that is usually absent in epic romances. Even when their male counterparts--Jake Lacy (Obvious Child) as Therese's boyfriend Richard; Kyle Chandler (Early Edition, Friday Night Lights) as Carol's ex-husband Harge--go into melodrama mode, Mara and Blanchett remain subtle, stoic and absolutely breathtaking. The lovely women seamlessly fit into their perfectly-crafted environment, which combines light, color and texture to create a cinematic wonder.
Unfortunately, that beautiful world isn't enough to carry the film all on its own. The story is surprisingly thin and disappointingly predictable. Worse, all the characters other than the two leads are one-dimensional stereotypes. Every man in the film is either a total jackass, or a throwaway character that exists only to move the plot forward. (Well, hey. At least SOMETHING is moving the plot forward.) Even Carol's best friend Abby is something of a ghost, popping in and out when needed with little background or motive of her own. It's almost as if literally every character but the two leads are puppets that exist only to explain the motives of Therese and Carol.
This issue is particularly irritating when the film's two-hour running time is taken into consideration, along with the surplus of establishing shots, insert shots, and lingering tracking shots of almost nothing at all. The cinematography is fantastic. The editing and script, however, leave something to be desired. There's 120 minutes here to play with, and yet it feels like there's no real story. Carol feels like a screenplay that never got past the log line. There's no real subplots. Characters that should be important, like Carol's daughter Rindy, are little more than human MacGuffins. Screen time is wasted on elevators and long tracking shots of train sets, while character development falls to the wayside. As for the antagonists, I've seen dollar-store cashiers more threatening. I get what they were trying to do--the oppressive atmosphere of the 1950s is the "real" villain--but it doesn't quite play out, leaving the film feeling unfortunately empty when all is said and done.
With all that said, Carol is still worth a watch. It's up there with Bridge of Spies in terms of production design, and the cinematography is to die for. Fellow feminists, you will be pleased to know that whatever other faults the script may have, it does pass the Bechdel Test--at least several times over, too. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett are in top form, and their nominations for Best Lead and Supporting Actress are well deserved. If Mara's turn as Lisbeth Salander didn't knock your socks off, her performance here will. (And can we please stop trashing on her for Pan, because that is really, really unfair.) Blanchett is as classy as ever...I don't know how that woman can make smoking and cursing look smooth, but she does...and her performance as the elusive Carol would make just about any of Hitchcock's blondes green with envy. It's the rest of the cast that doesn't quite hold up. Someone please tell Kyle Chandler that when acting opposite an actress as nuanced as Cate Blanchett, the "yell and project like a high-school theater major" approach does not work. But the ladies carry the movie well enough, when their star performances are combined with the beautiful visuals. It's just a shame that the story couldn't bring the same punch as the other elements.
I hate to pit women filmmakers against each other, but take a look at Jenny's Wedding in comparison to Carol. When I first saw Jenny's Wedding all I could think was "oh my God my parents have to see this." It was relevant. It would have been relevant two years ago when I was dating a girl (of whom my parents did not approve, for the record) and it's relevant now when I'm on the verge of moving out, because the film isn't really about a lesbian relationship, it's about learning who you are without your parents' approval. What's Carol really about, besides a lesbian romance? It doesn't seem like the writer or the director knew going in. And that is what takes a film that could have been fantastic, and knocks it down to just "really, really good." Still an A-grade, no doubt, but it's sad, because Carol deserved to be an A+.
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