I saw “Carol” right after “Hail, Caesar!” because I wanted to watch something decent and simple, and definitely not a film I had been anticipating to watch (I would never watch “Paterson” on an airplane, for example). And indeed, “Carol” was the exact opposite of “Hail, Caesar!” It has very few characters, a very straight-forward storyline and pretty fashion and interior design.
Carol
I’m very attracted to the idea of writing a diary simply so my children can peruse them one day and discover something they never told me before. Or maybe they won’t even care (but if they take after me even just a little bit, they’d read it out of curiosity hahaha). In a sense, this blog is the closest to a diary that I have, and it makes me feel a little remorseful that I never blogged any of the operas I have seen, most of which were meaningful and emotional experiences for me. I love reading about diaries from people whose literary works I like, and it would have been a shame if they hadn’t kept one like most people nowadays. Of course my diaries would not give such insights (except potentially to those aforementioned children), but I wonder if I will feel motivated to start with it at some point anyways. In Carol’s case, her daughter may feel abandoned by her mother for many years, only to discover one day that she may have been fighting a futile fight and that she had the choice between her child and, well, her deepest self. I wonder how Rindy would have judged on her mother in hindsight. Would she be understanding, or would she find her mother selfish and sick?
Later on, I read up about “Carol” on the internet and was surprised to see that it garnered so many good reviews. My impression of the film was not exactly negative, but to me it was a run of the mill story with run of the mill characters and run of the mill directing. I thought it was an entertaining, pretty period drama starring some of the greatest actresses of our time, but even so, nothing to write home about. I am impressed by Todd Haynes’s knack for stylishness though. “Far from Heaven” was supremely beautiful and “Carol” is too. If anything, I think that his films are romanticizing the 50s a little bit too much, and not even the socio-critical aspects of the films can hide the love they have for the 50s look. (The “there are no black people here” scene from “Far from Heaven” panning onto the faces of the black servants is absolutely brilliant, and I think “Carol” does not have a scene like that.)
I have the suspicion that “Carol” actually works better as a book. In my opinion, when a book is well-written, the most mundane story can easily become something very interesting and special, the difficulty consists in writing well. In a movie, it’s near impossible to ignore a mostly generic love story because you only have so much time to work with (2 hours is not a lot), even when you package it into extraordinarily pretty pictures like Haynes does.