On to today’s business…
Third place:
Spotlight (written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer) [89 points / 14 votes]
Second place:
Anomalisa (screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, based on his play [107 points / 18 votes]
And the Muriel goes to…
Carol [119 points / 19 votes]
“It's both amusing and fitting that Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt, which was first published as a 25-cent paperback by ‘Claire Morgan’ after Highsmith's publisher rejected it, would be the basis for an arthouse movie six decades later. While the romance between two women - one a shy young struggling artist, the other an older socialite going through a divorce - has enough dirty bits (by 1950s standards) to be sold as pulp fiction, it's as nuanced and emotionally complex as it is defiantly unconventional. No spoilers, but this is the rare book of its time featuring queer characters who aren't consumed with guilt and don't meet a tragic fate.
“The story unfolds from the point of view of Therese, the younger woman, who falls immediately for Carol after they meet in the department store where Therese works. Carol is a more elusive character by design, as we see her entirely through Therese's eyes; only towards the end of the book, as Therese has experienced her first love and heartbreak, do we get a clearer picture of who Carol really is. That Highsmith relies on Therese's inner monologue to tell her story must have posed a major challenge for screenwriter Phyllis Nagy. In adapting The Price of Salt for the screen, Nagy smartly tells the story from both characters' points of view.
“While Therese is still the protagonist, the screenplay includes crucial scenes involving Carol that are only related to Therese (and us) after the fact in the novel. Nagy also finds clever, subtle ways to externalize the progression of Therese and Carol's relationship. As both characters are trying to make sense of feelings that they can barely put into words, small gestures and bits of nonverbal communication take on a greater importance, and Nagy does a terrific job of translating these into cinematic terms. While the screenplay retains much of Highsmith's dialogue, it's the pregnant pauses between the lines that stand out in my memory.
“It's nearly impossible to precisely divide authorial credit, on a moment to moment basis, between the writer(s), director, stars and the many other people who work on a movie. I was glad that Nagy's screenplay was available to read, because I might have otherwise credited director Todd Haynes with more of the movie's subtle (and sometimes gloriously unsubtle) visual strategies. While Haynes is a perfect fit for the film, it's almost all there in the script, which is at once economical (paring away supporting characters to focus on the two leads) and meticulously detailed.
“And thankfully - not that I would've expected otherwise from Todd Haynes, but still - Carol completely embraces the essential queerness of The Price of Salt. A lot of people have found Carol emotionally detached, but for those on its wavelength, the extent to which the story teases and draws out Carol and Therese's budding romance and its consummation is both pleasurably sadistic and, ultimately, emotionally devastating. I'm far from the first person to observe this, but if you're straight and thought Carol was boring, maybe you should give it another look with a queer friend to provide subtitles.” ~ Andrew Bemis
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