Published on 2015-05-17 in the DeepFocus public account
Text / Zhang Yuxuan
There are too many gazes in the world. More than fifty years ago, Godard's "Contempt" featured a series of shots of Greek sculptures staring in all directions. As red eyes look to the camera, greet us, and the music of Georges Delerue plays, a power of holy emotion rises from the bottom of my heart. And the simple positive and negative gaze at the end of "Carol" is like this, but it is more profound.
In Yukio Mishima's long-length masterpiece "Sea of Plenty", there is such a description: the flames of evening, late night, and pre-dawn are not exactly the same flame, but they are not other flames, but depend on The same lamp, burning all night. Well, Cate Blanchett maintains the same sea-like gaze in the film's final pair of meaningful gazes, and Rooney Mara's eyes sparkle with the far more complex evening, late night, predawn flame. Their gazes set the audience's emotions and the set ablaze on the screen.
The story begins when Carol, played by Cate Blanchett, and Teresa, played by Rooney Mara, are eating at a restaurant, but the point of view falls on one of Teresa's male friends. We follow him into the restaurant, the set exudes a rich, well-heeled bourgeois atmosphere, and when we first see Carol, her identity and character have been taken as fur clothing, few dialogues, brevity The movements are expressed clearly and cleanly. Particularly impressive was the light press on Teresa's shoulder by Carroll as she left the dinner table for an appointment: Rooney Mara turned her head to Cate Blanchett at the right moment, blurred. The eyes told the dark, hesitant but brave feelings in her heart.
Teresa is a salesperson in a department store, and her boyfriend Richard is pressing for marriage. She can't talk about not loving him, and she can't talk about love. Carol is going through a divorce crisis. On Christmas Eve in 1952, Carroll went to the department store to buy Christmas gifts for her 4-year-old daughter, met Teresa, but forgot her gloves on the counter. Teresa kindly sends the gloves back with the gift she bought, and Carol invites her to the house as a thank you.
And Rooney Mara's brilliant performance even laid the foundation for a possible actress when the two ate at a restaurant for the first time. Teresa didn't know Carol's intentions, nor what kind of feelings she had for this much older woman. Carol, on the other hand, was much more assertive, ordering the meal familiarly without looking at the menu. For the aperitif, she ordered Dry Martini, and when the waiter walked up to Teresa, she imitated Carol who ordered the same aperitif, and simply said "I want the exact same thing." This is a very important plot point, and Teresa begins her exploration of the charming woman in front of her: by learning from her. Her manner, the position of her eyes. Carol naturally saw all this clearly, she lit her cigarette gracefully, tilted her head and lifted the hair on the back of her neck, and the scent of perfume drifted to Teresa. She was seducing her, so natural and breathtaking. The ultimate attraction of a mature woman to a woman who may be just a girl is nothing more than that.
What happens later is not surprising: Carol has not yet divorced her husband completely, doesn't want to spend Christmas with him, her husband takes her beloved daughter, and she drives Teresa out for the holidays. This journey similar to a road film allowed the two to deepen their understanding of each other, and physical contact naturally occurred. That night, Teresa sat in front of her dresser and looked in the mirror, while Carol stood behind her and looked at her. Carroll is father, mother and lover at the same time: strength, sublime and sensuality. She guided Teresa until she became very familiar with her body. Teresa also bravely faced the most hidden discovery in her life, and walked step by step to the golden peak in the forest.
The director's brilliance is that by completely rejecting the attempt to rationalize Teresa's cryptic discovery, Freud no longer appears in the psychoanalysis of possible unpleasant experiences in her childhood. Here, there are only feelings. What we see is only overflowing with emotion, this simple, plump love dripping slowly from the edge of the screen. Just like Teresa once asked her boyfriend, even though she didn't understand that her love for Carol was that logical and inexplicable love: "Have you ever liked a boy?" Gender no longer exists, usually The configuration of opposite-sex characters in gay films has also been subverted.
Traveling with a same-sex "friend" during Christmas and New Years, and at a critical stage in the divorce lawsuit, Carroll was put together by her husband. What he saw as a scandalous mental and physical infidelity made him decide to avenge his jealousy with custody of the child. How will Carroll react? Will the movie turn into a mediocre hero type, and then Carroll completes her redemption and regains custody of her children? Or worse: Carol's relationship with Teresa gives way to a familial and ethical farce? neither. The director asked Carroll to take the initiative to admit his "mistake" and gave up custody of the child, but asked to visit his child at a regular time. The custody battle seems to be another kind of grim battle in America's divorced movies and TV shows, and hardly any script would make any character voluntarily relinquish this sacred right: it's the victory of a marriage that's about to end. The spoils of war are the commanding heights of morality. On such a moral and emotional scale, Carroll made a choice in Lou Ye's famous line from Yu Hong's "Summer Palace": What is morality? I think two people together, this is morality.
All of the above are flashbacks after Teresa's dinner scene with Carol in the opening credits. Back in reality, Teresa decides to leave her friend's boring, lonely party and find her before nine o'clock at Carroll's appointment.
She was chatting around a table with a few friends when she saw her. She saw her gaze again, and she wasn't sure if that gaze belonged to the exact same flame as she did to her, but she was sure she wasn't any other flame. They have to depend on the same lamp and burn it all night.
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