Carol (2015)

[Plain Old Tele]

Discuss.

[Lizzy]

Gorgeous, rich and romantic. Blanchett and Mara are excellent. Grade A

[Ezen Baklattan]

It's amazing. Beautifully captures, both emotionally and visually, the highs and lows of the journey of love with absolute grace and wonder. Every emotional beat feels real and earned, and the movie becomes truly etheral as we see these two pressured women find solace and hope in each other. This might be my favorite shot movie of the year, fusing breathtaking, subtle, yet beautiful imagery with its story seamlessly.

[baumer]

This is a film that grew on me as it went along.  Taking place in the 50's, it reminds you how far we have come with same sex relationships.  This, like The Revenant, takes its time telling the story and it is more than an hour into the film before the two ladies finally express their love for one another.  I have to say, that as a heterosexual male, I was completely mesmerized by the love scene between Blanchett and Mara.  I thought it was beautifully filmed yet very erotic.  Blanchett is one of the great actors or our generation but imo, she is upstaged a little bit by Mara, who imo is the true strength of the film.  Her transformation from a nervous, unsure, hesitant and insecure girl into the confident and strong woman that she becomes, is really an amazing journey.  I also loved to hate Kyle Chandler, who exemplified a once stereotypical male...one that if he could have the woman he loved, then no one could.  But he was also a monster along the way.  He decided at one point that the best way to win his wife back, who obviously didn't have feelings for him anymore, was to threaten to take her child away from her.  To me, that is just a horrible horrible thing to do to someone.  I loved to hate him.

 

I don't think Carol is one of the best films of the year in terms of Oscar recognition, but it is a very good one.

 

9/10

[Blankments]

Carol is a methodical film. The pacing is slow, but you always want to see what happens next. It's hard to really talk about, as it ends as soon as it begins in many ways, and yet, you feel like there's more than enough here to appreciate. Todd Haynes' direction is brilliant, although I was hoping for a bit more esoteric elements in style. Rooney Mara is fantastic, and Cate Blanchett is no slouch too. Both portray the complicated women they are to near perfection, although Blanchett comes off sometimes as, well, Cate Blanchett, not Carol Aird. The script is good too. I can't really judge the cinematography as where I was sitting in the auditorium kinda hurt my ability to analyze it, and the score is good, not great. There are great moments in it, and it's pretty admirable in a lot of aspects; it was just missing something for me. I'm not sure what; it also could be that I was exhausted while watching it. Carol is a very good film, and worthy of the accolades it has been receiving; I just wish I enjoyed it more rather than appreciating it. B

[AniNate]

There were brief moments here and there where I really became invested in the drama I was watching on screen, but overall I found it rather uninvolving. The movie doesn't devote much time to explaining what Carol and Therese see in each other, it just kind of throws them together and assumes we'll root for them simply because it's a socially forbidden love, and it doesn't do anything particularly interesting with their relationship once it's established. I did find the divorce/child custody subplot reasonably engaging, and I think the movie had potential to deliver a much more emotional punch if that had been its main focus rather than the romance.

[filmlover]

A tender and well-crafted romance bolstered to a higher level thanks to superb performances. Cate Blanchett is terrific as always, while Rooney Mara gives her most confidant work to date (and yes, I will join the chorus and say that her placement in Supporting is completely laughable). A-

[JohnnY]

This was fine, but still a bit boring. It's beautiful and well acted, of course, but it dragged a bit sometimes, I wanted more and most of it was so not-engaging for me.

 

65/100

Edited January 28, 2016 by JohnnY

[CJohn]

A++++++++++++++++

 

Fuck ya all who think otherwise. 

[Jake Gittes]

Probably the closest any period piece of recent years has come to matching the tone and character work of Mad Men, taking a story that could have been wildly melodramatic on screen and playing it subtly and without clichés and hysterics - but also with some expertly placed moments where the emotion breaks through, and it's all the more powerful because we'd seen the characters hold it back before. Mara's performance is in contention for the best of last year, and Blanchett's ethereal quality is perfect for the character who should be believably larger-than-life. I could go on, but in short I really loved this. If I had seen it in 2015, would have been my #2 of the year behind Fury Road.

Edited March 13, 2016 by Jake Gittes