After our talk about great films*, I decided I needed to go out to the movies more…because I used to enjoy the experience of seeing film in a cinema so much and somewhere along the way, I got out of the habit of it.
So I walked over to the Violet Crown and got the last seat for Carol. I was underimpressed. The acting was fine, the period sets and costumes lovely, the cinematography elegant. But there just wasn’t much of a story. I found it emotionally sterile and oddly unaffecting for a love story. I spent most of my time marveling over how much Rooney Mara looked like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, a look I thought never could be equalled.
Strange, too, because I’d just been reading a story from +The New Yorker on what we can learn about love from fiction which made the (I considered quite over-generalized) observation that in men’s fiction, love is based on appearances while in women’s fiction, love is based on intellectual or emotional stimulation. By that rule (which I don’t necessarily believe), Carol is love viewed through the male gaze, even if it is about two women.
So is the main appeal that it is a lesbian love story? That’s not enough for me. Had the lovers been more traditional, I would still have been bored in the extreme. Changing the sexuality isn’t enough of a draw. The people or the situation has to be interesting in of itself.
Contrast it, then, with Blue is the Warmest Color which is so emotionally raw and draining. Now that’s an affecting movie.
I’ve obviously missed the point, so chime in if you know it. Now that I’ve recorded my initial reaction, I’m off to read some reviews and see if they shed any light.
Update: 2016-01-17 15:22:53-0500
Anthony Lane at +The New Yorker seemed to have a similar reaction…yet seems more indulgent than I. I disagree. I don’t think Carol and Therese are enough.
“Aside from Chandler’s baffled Harge, and a typically strong and witty performance from Sarah Paulson, as Carol’s gay best friend, almost everything else fades from memory, including sequences with lawyers and a meagre subplot about Therese’s ambitions as a photographer. Yet Carol and Therese are enough….We have spent the past two hours gasping on cue at the outfits and the jewelry, and asking why the distributors couldn’t go the extra mile, show the film in AromaRama (first used in 1959), and pump the theatre full of Arpège and Femme de Rochas. In short, we suspected that “Carol,” like “Far from Heaven,” was holding its vision of the past in quotation marks, too chilled by cleverness to bother with our hearts.”
Anthony Lane, The New Yorker