Review: The Beautiful Ache of “Carol”

Chemistry, we are told, is the study of matter and the way it interacts. How the composition of one thing can combine with another thing to form something altogether new. In short, it’s the science of change.

Yet no microscope has yet been invented that can truly understand the chemical reaction that is falling in love. The elusive biology of the human heart, the hungry physics of desire – these remain as inexplicable to us today as they were at the beginning of time. Yet, time and time again, we find ourselves engulfed in the sweet and far too often cruel mystery of our emotions.

But where science fails us, art steps in. And, in those most rare and most special instances, it helps us understand what no equation, no formula, no theorem ever could. “Carol” is one of those moments.

You see this is a film all about chemistry. But not the kind that bubbles up in beakers. Instead it’s a study of the spark of attraction, the smolder of longing, the sear of passion. “Carol” is perhaps the most beautiful ache you will ever experience in the cinema.

Director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy (who are both, it should be noted, out artists), have adapted the 1952 lesbian classic “The Price of Salt” by author Patricia Highsmith into something altogether extraordinary. When paired with the exquisite performances by Cate Blanchett (as housewife Carol Aird) and Rooney Mara (as shopgirl Therese Belivet), it becomes something truly transcendent.

This is, quite simply, the lesbian movie we’ve been waiting for.

“Carol” is at once set in a very specific period, early 1950s New York, yet also able to break free from the petty restrictions of space and time. It is Christmas in fastidiously recreated Manhattan and Carol breezes into a department store where Therese is working behind the doll counter.

Carol is impossibly sophisticated in her glamorous mink coat and Therese is dewy with youth in her store-mandated Santa hat. Yet from the moment their eyes meet across the crowded store floor, it’s there – chemistry.

That mutual magnetism drives “Carol” in a way few films allow us to see women in love. While it would be easy to understand why someone, anyone with eyes really, would swoon over the allure of Blanchett’s Carol (her low, measured tone alone is the very definition of ravishing), the story also allows us to see clearly what Carol sees in Therese. It would be too cheap to say it is just the bloom of youth.

In Therese we see a curiosity about the world and a dissatisfaction with the prescribed order of things. Where Blanchett has been made to look like an iconic, cool blond goddess of the silver screen, Mara recalls an unadorned Audrey Hepburn – but with a yearning behind her inquisitive eyes that belies her age.

When Carol absentmindedly, or on purpose, leaves her gloves on Therese’s counter, it sets in motion a slow burn that will consume both women. But fire – with its penchant to destroy – also brings about rebirth. What rises from it is often more magnificent in its resilience and strength.

As the women embark on a road trip together out west over the holiday break, their unspoken courtship continues at a measured – almost unbearable – pace. Carol’s big Packard probably never breaks 50 mph, yet at times your heart will pound as if they’re racing together in a grand prix. Such is the power of the tension, the delicious anticipation, Haynes and company have built between these two.

We hang on every touch, we luxuriate in each glance, we watch them watch each other through windows – so many windows.

On the home front, both women have impatient men waiting for them – for Carol a husband angered and bewildered by their pending divorce (played by Kyle Chandler, the good guy from “Friday Nigh Lights”), for Therese a boyfriend angered and bewildered by her refusal to run off to Europe with him (played by Jake Lacy, the good guy from “Obvious Child”). Carol also has a true and knowing friend, and former lover, to confide in with Abby (played by the always good Sarah Paulson).

Over the course of quiet lunches and aphoristic visits, we – both us watching and the characters on the screen – come to the understanding that these two women simply cannot stay away from each other.

Of course, there is also the understanding that two women who simply cannot stay away from each other in 1950s America is not a thing people comprehend, let alone accept. Yet this is not a film that strives to retell a hushed history of the love that dare not speak its name in the pre-Eisenhower era. Nor is it the sort of standard-issue coming out story we’ve been accustomed to seeing on the screen. Neither woman is shown struggling against her sexuality. In fact the word “lesbian” isn’t even uttered once.

Still, while this is not a film interested in explicitly showcasing a movement or protesting injustices, this is very much a political film. It has to be. The act of showing two women in love, two women in lust (however restrained and tastefully shot) who refuse to apologize for their feelings remains a fundamentally revolutionary act in this world.

So the seriousness with which this film approaches our love, the reverence which it displays for these women’s attraction, the universality which it reflects in their undeniable chemistry – all that matters. The process of expanding people’s minds, opening their hearts through nothing more than moving pictures projected two-stories high – that’s the true art of change.