Beautiful to look at and intensely moving, more than
anything, the film Carol by Todd Haynes is a film about looking, spying and
voyeurism in general. It is this aspect that makes the film a perfect ode to
cinema and its photographic origin.
It starts from the film's material feel; the film has a
grain to it that makes it seem, along with its gorgeous costume and set design,
like celluloid coming straight from the 1950s. This is due to it having been
filmed on super 16 mm film, which can be enlarged digitally to 35 mm (the
standard cinematic film size), in this way giving the film immensely textured
visuals adding to the authentic 50s feeling. There are various
moments in the film that make a clear reference to film, such as a scene early on, shot from the projection booth of a cinema, where we get a brief glimpse of
Sunset Blv., one of the most knowingly self-referential films from that era.
Furthermore, the obsession with its medium comes back in the
main character Therese's interest in photography. There are various scenes that
involve looking through a lens, focusing on the apparatus of the photo-camera
as well as the gradual development of the photograph in its solution.
Especially in this last scene we can find endless cinematic references to the
mid-century era of film, from Peeping Tom to Blow Up. It is also no coincidence
that her photography reminded me very much of Vivian Mayer, on whom her work is
apparently modelled. A shy photographer, Mayer's work was only discovered after she
died, yet the photos showed a keen eye for humanity, to which one conversation
in the film clearly points.
However, besides the technical aspects and references in the
film, the looks performed by the two main characters, played brilliantly by
Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett, are amongst the most intense you'll ever
encounter on the silver screen. It is the act of looking and being looked at
that comes back in the very narrative of the film, with an important tipping
point in the story relating to being spied upon. There is one particular scene at the very
start of the film that is repeated at the end with added context, which has
incredibly powerful tension, enhanced by the sound briefly falling away. Something very rare happens at this moment: for just a few seconds the film becomes pure cinema. The characters are just looking
at each other, we only see them and feel a whole raging storm of emotions
hiding behind their perfectly composed exterior. The film becomes a pure
powerful image without sound or melodrama, to which the immensely involved spectator adds
everything. Through this activity we become spectators with agency and it is a wonderful feeling indeed.
There are various moments like these in the film that focus
on looking alone: by showing a close up of a gloved hand on the radio, the
texture of a fur coat, lipsticked lips, or when viewing someone going home in
the distance while the frame is partially covered by the dark curved hood of a
car. It shows a world so constricted and superficially beautiful, a place of
endless artificiality and pretence, where a look is the only thing that remains
when one is desperate to find a shimmer of truth.
