Carol and Mise-en-scène: How an Auteur Acts with the Actors
"I wanna know. I think. I mean, I want to ask you things. But I'm not sure you want that." "Sorry. What am I thinking? I'm thinking that I'm utterly selfish." "Wherever my car will take me. West, soon. And I thought, perhaps, you might want to come with me. Would you?" Todd Haynes' Carol is the best film I've seen in the theatre in the past six years. In fact, I went to go see it five days in a row the winter it came out. Todd Haynes hits the right note on so many things, stealing from the masters like Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Lean. The acting in the film is also phenomenal. Rooney Mara, especially, is just perfect. She has a tremendously rare gift that eludes even many of the best in the business: the ability to pull in or shut out the audience so quietly at will. ("Quietly" meaning the subtlety in her inflections and facial expressions.) Be...