All the right words have probably been used: stunning, mesmerizing, tantalizing. All these and the prepared for "love that dared not speak its name" set in the 50s are what we expect as we sit in the theatre. However, the words I came away with were not so headlight blinding on a dark night; rather, the stillness caught me. And when the stillness ended only the perfectly necessary, perfectly nuanced, movement captured my eye and held me spellbound into the next stillness. And the Silences. When did we forget how a silence can speak a thousand thoughts and ideas and notions? When did we lose ourselves in this cacophony of voices, unceasing, these incoherent noises? And how can this newly found silence find us yearning, not for words, no; instead, we beg, leaning forward in our seats, holding our breath, waiting or wishing or dying for another glance or equally as satisfying (but now almost universally neglected) another gentle, almost intangible - except from the disturbance of air around it - brush of a hand on a shoulder, and then gasping for air as it finally arrives? When did we lose the ability to interpret in a glance (and maybe a barely distinguishable lift of the corner of a mouth with the exact right shade of lipstick) across the department store floor an existence of unrelenting and profound loneliness, of desolation, of hopelessness? When did we lose the ability to say yes to life, and risk, and hoping the feeling in your gut is telling you this isn't the worst idea ever? Whenever we lost all these gifts: when we lost silence as an amplifier; when we lost the ability to translate a touch that speaks what we can't say aloud into "I love you" and "I need you" and "I will be desolate without you;" when we lost the ability to say with our eyes alone, "you are the piece of me I didn't know was missing;" when the choices were not an easily managed yes or no, but instead asked us the existence shattering, "shall I give up my soul ... or my soul?" I don't know when we lost all these gifts of communication, but I found them all here, watching a film in a small theatre in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and I was heartbroken and uplifted; terrified by the honesty and horrified by the cruelty in this world I was invited into; and yet, I am still loathe to go to another place, another time, where Carol and Terese are not speaking this language, where I am not the voyeur - the audience reeling with the profound reminders of how little we need speech, if only we commit to using every other sense to communicate.
AFTER 3 Viewings:
Three days ago, I noticed the silences and stillness and how in each moment of stillness and/or silence the actors' emotions/micro-expressions/silent communication is amplified. Every single movement, each touch, each look is devastatingly important. There is not one extraneous word, look, or moment in the entire film.
Yesterday, I saw perspective. If you live in a world with little screen time, you find the world rarely looks at you with a straight back and a face looking directly at you. Instead, people tilt their heads, give sidelong glances, look over their shoulders. Well, this is what the DP and the Director give us in Carol. Real looks, glances over shoulders, wry smiles, longing through rain splattered taxi glass. We get a unique perspective while we watch Carol and Terese. And I was mesmerized.
And then today it was the music. It is perfect. And by perfect, I mean, when you need it, where you need it, providing its own subtext while seemingly leading you along the way. It is stunning in its simplicity and yet, I cannot imagine any other film which could so seamlessly integrate the variety of moods and genres.
Finally, making a film is a team sport. Maybe it's because Phyllis Nagy took her time and waited and worked on this script for decades, or maybe she wrote it in 6 sleep deprived, alcohol fueled days, chain smoking American Spirit Cigarettes. However it came about, this script is gold. Take that foundation, add Todd Haynes and all the crew plus the actors and you have alchemy at its very core.
Cate Blanchett and Rooney together are so profoundly good at what they do, I found myself not at a film or play, but a voyeur watching a life unfold. And the story, as told by the team putting this film together, is possibly the most unnervingly true story ever told on film. And I am frankly at a loss how to go on now, knowing that I can't see the rest of it: the dinners, the relaxing into relationship, the constant conversation between Carol and Terese that involves no spoken words. I am devastated that I don't get to see the next Act, or even the next scene.
And that, my friends, makes for an Oscar winner...
AFTER 3 Viewings:
Three days ago, I noticed the silences and stillness and how in each moment of stillness and/or silence the actors' emotions/micro-expressions/silent communication is amplified. Every single movement, each touch, each look is devastatingly important. There is not one extraneous word, look, or moment in the entire film.
Yesterday, I saw perspective. If you live in a world with little screen time, you find the world rarely looks at you with a straight back and a face looking directly at you. Instead, people tilt their heads, give sidelong glances, look over their shoulders. Well, this is what the DP and the Director give us in Carol. Real looks, glances over shoulders, wry smiles, longing through rain splattered taxi glass. We get a unique perspective while we watch Carol and Terese. And I was mesmerized.
And then today it was the music. It is perfect. And by perfect, I mean, when you need it, where you need it, providing its own subtext while seemingly leading you along the way. It is stunning in its simplicity and yet, I cannot imagine any other film which could so seamlessly integrate the variety of moods and genres.
Finally, making a film is a team sport. Maybe it's because Phyllis Nagy took her time and waited and worked on this script for decades, or maybe she wrote it in 6 sleep deprived, alcohol fueled days, chain smoking American Spirit Cigarettes. However it came about, this script is gold. Take that foundation, add Todd Haynes and all the crew plus the actors and you have alchemy at its very core.
Cate Blanchett and Rooney together are so profoundly good at what they do, I found myself not at a film or play, but a voyeur watching a life unfold. And the story, as told by the team putting this film together, is possibly the most unnervingly true story ever told on film. And I am frankly at a loss how to go on now, knowing that I can't see the rest of it: the dinners, the relaxing into relationship, the constant conversation between Carol and Terese that involves no spoken words. I am devastated that I don't get to see the next Act, or even the next scene.
And that, my friends, makes for an Oscar winner...
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