Tag: Cate Blanchett

Elizabeth (1998)

Joseph Fiennes flirts with a regal Cate Blanchett in this landmark Tudor history flick Elizabeth

Director: Shekhar Kapur

Cast: Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth I), Geoffrey Rush (Francis Walsingham), Joseph Fiennes (Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester), Richard Attenborough (Lord William Cecil), Christopher Eccleston (Duke of Norfolk), Kathy Burke (Mary I), Fanny Ardant (Mary of Guise), Vincent Cassel (Duke of Anjou), Eric Cantona (French Ambassador de Foix), Emily Mortimer (Kat Ashley), Kelly Macdonald (Isabel Knollys), John Gielgud (Pope Pius V), Daniel Craig (John Ballard), James Frain (Alvaro de la Quadra), Edward Hardwicke (Earl of Arundel), Jamie Foreman (Earl of Sussex), Terence Rigby (Bishop Gardiner)

Not many people would think of Elizabeth as being an influential film. But I would say the roots of all modern costume drama can be found in this British Tudor epic. Classic costume drama before had seen the focus on “thees and thous”, Greensleeves, lovely costumes, well-lit sets and a certain grandeur. Elizabeth re-set the table. Mixing The Godfather with Elizabeth R, Elizabeth turned costume drama into a world of dark schemes, political intrigue, violence and lashings of sex and passion. It would leave prestige Hollywood dramas of the 70s and 80s behind and turn costume drama into something far darker, grittier and sexual than ever before.

The film follows the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett). The queen is young, naïve and passionate. She’s well educated and smart, but still impulsive and too much in thrall to her emotions. She’s far too open about her sex-filled love affair with Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes), new-made Earl of Leicester, and too inexperienced to heed the advice of either William Cecil (Richard Attenborough), who is pushing her towards the middle-ground of European alliances, or Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), who argues for Elizabeth to lead a strong nation, willing to take on its enemies. Conspiracies whirl around the court, as disaffected Catholics led by the Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston) plot to seize the crown and restore the “true religion”.

Elizabeth’s style is triumphant. Many of the scenes take place in dimly lit halls at court, and candlelit private chambers. The palace is seemingly made of nooks and crannies where conspirators and lovers can silently retreat and keep their intentions secret. The music – wonderfully composed by David Hirschfelder – is a mixture of urgent marches and murky sounding chords, which brings a watery effect to the soundtrack, as if every moment could twist into swamp-like traps of treachery. The film is briskly cut, frequently jump-cutting and putting together impressive montages of conspirators or events.

The film starts with such a montage of protestants being burned: moving swiftly from a death warrant being stamped, to heads being brutally (and bloodily) shaved to an overhead shot of the cart carrying the martyrs to their deaths, culminating in their cries as the fires reach hold and finally overwhelm the soundtrack. It’s a sign straightaway that this will be very different from the traditional taste and decorum of a costume drama – and this film won’t flinch away from the grimness. Shekhar Kapur’s direction throughout is stylish, dynamic and uses editing and cinematic tricks to great effect (if at times with a little too much flash).

And the film is soaking in political intrigue – conspiracies and plots swell and unfold, with the film finally culminating in a clearly Godfather-esque purge of the Queen’s enemies. This is Tudor drama as Mafia flick, the lords of England little better than the heads of the five families, and Elizabeth the young heir they underestimate at their peril. It takes historical action and brings it definitely into a very modern feeling conspiracy thriller, using cinematic tricks and good editing to break away from the more staid period pieces of the 1970s into something much darker and atmospheric.

That also carries across into its exploration of sex, something that has got even more play in costume dramas since. It’s odd to think that the film was quite controversial at the time for showing Elizabeth and Dudley engaged in a passionate sexual affair, or for suggesting that the Queen “became a virgin” as part of piece of political showmanship. The film fronts and centres the young naivety of Elizabeth and her all-consuming fascination with Dudley – well played by Joseph Fiennes as a part romantic dreamer, part tragic weakling – and her slow realisation that there is no place for romance and passion in the world of being a queen.

Because the film is also a coming of age drama: how did Elizabeth become the Greatest Tudor Monarch? Cate Blanchett is inspired casting choice, dominating the film with a multi-faceted performance that sees Elizabeth change from an excited young girl into the distant authoritarian figure. Blanchett gets to play it all here, showing her impressive range, charting this changing personality as not always linear – so a scene of giddy romance can be followed by her sharpness when challenging the lords of England over matters of religion and then back to weakness. While you can argue the film undermines Elizabeth’s intelligence (particularly early on) what it does capture supremely well is her determination and her wilfulness. It also triumphantly turns her into a very human figure, Blanchett brilliantly showing a character forcefully – and consciously – reshaping herself to meet the demands of her office.

Around Blanchett, Kapur assembles possibly one of the most eclectic casts in history. Can you think of another film where you could see John Gielgud one scene and Eric Cantona the next? Richard Attenborough and Angus Deayton side-by-side? Fortunately, the core roles are played by assured and impressive performers. Eccleston makes for a wonderfully imperious, self-important Norfolk. Cassel goes gleefully over-the-top as the camp Anjou. Frain, Craig and others excel in early roles. The pick of the lot is a mesmeric performance by Rush as the sinister but loyal Walsingham, an eminence grise willing to work things in the background Elizabeth wants but cannot ask for, a wartime consigliere, several steps ahead of the rest and whose loyalty to Elizabeth is matched only by his ruthlessness.

Historically the film has only a passing resemblance to reality. Elizabeth’s political astuteness was sharper from the first than the film gives her credit for (although, as its aim is to stress how humanity must be sacrificed for power, there are artistic reasons for this). Bishop Gardiner, leader of the anti-Elizabeth church faction, had died during the reign of Mary I. Cecil is played as an unimaginative old man, when he was in fact in his thirties when Elizabeth came to the throne, and her most trusted and wisest advisor. Numerous events are telescoped and combined – the Ridolfi plot which (roughly) climaxes the film took place 14 years into Elizabeth’s rule, not within at most a year. The film ends with a series of historical captions, not a single one of which is actually true. Michael Hirst’s script plays fast and loose with history (and with the odd dodgy line along the way) but he’s got a flair for bringing out the drama.

But does it matter? After all, who really looks to films for their history lessons? What Elizabeth is trying to do is to turn history into cinema, and this it does to glorious effect. It also managed to change our idea of what a “history film” was. After Elizabeth, history dramas would turn increasingly into darker tales, tinged with sex and conspiracy. But this film remains one of the best, directed with real flair and style by Kapur and powered by a superb performance by Cate Blanchett. Elizabeth gets more or less everything (apart from the facts of course) stylishly right and tells English history with gripping and entertaining intensity.

Blue Jasmine (2013)

Cate Blanchett dominates the screen in Blue Jasmine

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Cate Blanchett (Jasmine Francis), Sally Hawkins (Ginger), Alec Baldwin (Hal Francis), Peter Sarsgaard (Dwight Westlake), Louis CK (Al Munsinger), Andrew Dice Clay (Augie), Bobby Cannavale (Chili), Michael Stuhlbarg (Dr Flicker), Aldren Ehrenreich (Danny Francis)

Every so often an actor intersects with a director and, such is the actor’s brilliance, they seem to take the film by the scruff of the neck and almost carry the director along to success. Such is the case with Blue Jasmine, a film so seized upon, so wonderfully played and brilliantly observed by a truly phenomenal (she won every award going) Cate Blanchett, you feel Woody Allen just let the camera record her work and carefully built the film around her.

Allen’s film, easily one of his best of his troubled later years, is a modernised remix of Streetcar Named Desire. After a Ponzi scheme scandal leads to her husband Hal’s (Alec Baldwin) arrest and suicide, Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) finds herself landing in the poor end of San Francisco and sharing a house with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Ginger’s marriage to Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) collapsed after Hal’s dirty dealings destroyed their lottery win landfall. Jasmine, teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, living half in the present and half in an imagined version of her own past, soon clashes with Ginger’s new boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale) and eventually finds hope for a second chance with diplomat Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard) who is oblivious to her background.

The parallels between Blue Jasmine and Streetcar should be pretty clear to anyone reading that summary, and Allen draws some neat modernisation parallels (and thankfully, and wisely, drops the rape plotline that ends that play) between the two. Placing Blanche/Jasmine as the trophy wife of a corrupt businessman, who has shut her eyes to his dealings and let her own intellect drain away in shallow frippery, works really well. Not least dramatizing very well the cultural shift from this extreme wealth (detailed in a series of cleverly interwoven flashbacks) to the relative poverty of normal life.

But the film really works from the super-intelligent, hyper-brilliant, eye-catching wonderfulness of Cate Blanchett in the lead role. This is one of those performances for the ages, a tour-de-force of fragility, self-pity, self-deception, hostility, undirected anger, desperation and pain that dominates and shapes the entire movie. Blanchett is particularly effective because she never, ever overplays the role, but let’s these complex, contradictory emotions play constantly behind her eyes and slowly seem to dribble out until they dominate her entire body. Several times, Allen plants the camera and allows us to simply watch Blanchett go through various stages of mental collapse in front of our very eyes, with this amazing actress able to seemingly fall apart in slow motion in front of us.

Jasmine is a complex and fascinating character, in some ways hugely unsympathetic. She’s a massive snob, she certainly feels the world owes her something (she flies into San Francisco first class complaining she has had to sell everything just to make ends meet, while dragging Louis Vuitton luggage behind her), she lies when she needs to and treats everyone around her with a slight air of condescension. But she’s also incredibly vulnerable, and carrying a great deal of guilt and pain, as well as only barely able to deal not only with the loss of her privileged lifestyle, but also her growing (but denied) realisation that the price of the lifestyle wasn’t worth the having it.

The film throws her into a series of contexts that show her at her best and worst, as victim and as fantasist. Getting a job at a dentist’s reception desk – a job she seems to only barely have the patience or aptitude for – she is forced to see off the unwelcome advances of her creepy boss (played with a passive aggressive sleaziness by Michael Stuhlbarg) with horror. Later though, she wilfully deceives Dwight (a fine performance of assured arrogance by Peter Sarsgaard) about her background and character. She is partly right in her assessment of her sister Ginger having a very low opinion of herself, so only pairing herself with men who treat her badly; but Chili is also right about her having no regard or time for her sister when she was wealthy.

The use of flashbacks throughout the film works very well to show us Jasmine before and after her economic crash. What’s fascinating is that her fragility is an ever-present, kept suppressed under a shower of gifts, but quickly coming to the fore when Hal’s (has there been a better role for Baldwin than this jovial, greedy cheat?) serial infidelity is bought to her attention. It also serves to remind us to keep Jasmine at a certain distance, her own evaluations of what her past life was like frequently not squaring with the version we see.

All of this hinges on Blanchett’s brilliant work, but she’s not alone in delivering a fine performance. As her blousy sister, moving like a weathervane from person to person, changing her opinions quickly depending on her recent experiences, Sally Hawkins is possibly at her best here as well. Andrew Dice Clay is excellent as an honest Joe who hovers over the film like an object of destiny. Bobby Cannavale does some very good work as a feckless but sort-of honest Stanley Kowalski.

Allen’s direction is calm and almost in awe of Blanchett, and that’s fair enough because whatever you look at, it comes back to her striking genius in the film. Blue Jasmine may remove some of the depth that Blanche has (with her life of pain and guilt in the play’s backstory) but it substitutes that with a gripping exploration of a long-running mental collapse that is so movingly and superbly brought to life by Blanchett you can’t help but be engrossed by it.

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench battle with obsession in Notes on a Scandal

Director: Richard Eyre

Cast: Judi Dench (Barbara Covett), Cate Blanchett (Sheba Hart), Bill Nighy (Richard Hart), Andrew Simpson (Steven Connolly), Phil Davis (Brian Bangs), Michael Maloney (Sandy Pabblem), Joanna Scanlan (Sue Hodge), Tom Georgeson (Ted Mawson), Shaun Parkes (Bill Rumer), Emma Williams (Linda), Julia McKenzie (Marjorie), Juno Temple (Polly Hart)

Zoe Heller’s novel Notes on a Scandal makes superb use of an increasingly unreliable narrator to reveal the complications in the affair between a female art teacher and a young male student. It’s a device that doesn’t always carry across as well to film, but Richard Eyre and screenwriter Patrick Marber have still crafted a fine story about obsession and envy in all its different ways.

In an inner-city school, bohemian art teacher Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) is a new arrival, struggling to learn how to control her students. It’s a skill long-since mastered by jaded and bitter history teacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), who soon finds herself fascinated by the attractive and engaging Sheba. This relationship is complicated when she discovers that Sheba has begun a sexual relationship with one of her 15-year old students, Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson), a student with a difficult record who has shown a surprising interest in art. As Barbara positions herself as Sheba’s only trusted confidant, the danger of discovery begins to become ever more likely as Sheba’s behaviour becomes more and more reckless.

The real strength of Eyre’s film are the two lead performances from Dench and Blanchett, a match-up surely made in casting heaven. Dench is superb in one of her best film roles, turning Barbara Covett into exactly the sort of shrivelled up, bitter spinster you are not surprised to learn has led a life of loneliness. Dench laces the performance with a sharp nastiness, masked behind a chilly professionalism, but she also makes clear the aching loneliness, the desperation and the ability to deceive herself that Barbara has, the longing to be loved but also the possessive obsession that drives love away.

She’s equally well-matched by Blanchett, at her most glamourous and natural as Sheba. One of the film’s strengths is the way it avoids giving spurious psychological reasons for Sheba’s obsession for this basically fairly unpleasant young lout. Blanchett identifies this sense of being trapped in Sheba, this desire to rebel and taste a little bit of freedom (in every home scene she is shown undertaking most if not all the housework and childcaring duties), feelings that mutate into a sexual obsession with Connolly. Blanchett is desperate, self-deceiving and hugely tragic, unable to fully express the reasons for her feelings herself, but unable to let go of her addiction to a new wildness and danger in her life that you feel she has never really felt before.

These two performances power a film that explores obsession and envy, with Barbara obsessed (to a scarily possessive and manipulative degree) with Sheba, exploiting Sheba’s own reckless and sexual obsession with Connolly. These feelings are shown to be often beyond the understanding of other characters, and both women ret-con events and reactions from the target of their obsessions to build elaborate fantasy worlds. It’s the danger of obsession here, the way we shape the facts to meet our desired preconceptions. It doesn’t matter what reality, or what anyone else, says – you want to believe what you want to believe.

And it’s these obsessions that lead people both to take unbelievable risks and also to feel a crushing sense of envy and possession. Both Barbara and Sheba can barely tolerate the idea of their loves focusing attention elsewhere, and despite seeming to have so much control in their relationships are helpless victims. Sheba is reduced to begging tears when it feels like her relationship with Connolly is burning out. After all is revealed, Barbara’s efforts to take control of Sheba’s life are revealed to be powered by an almost desperately sad need to believe that Sheba and she are starting a new life together. So deep is Barbara’s denial about her own lesbianism (and so extreme her unhappiness about herself), it’s a romantic vision she is so deep in denial feels unable to even begin to put any sexual dimension onto.

Envy and human frailty run through the whole film. Most of the teaching staff, especially Phil Davis’ sad-sack maths teacher in love with Sheba, carry their own small obsessions and envies. Sheba’s husband himself left his first wife for Sheba when she was one of his students. The students have more than enough rivalries to deal with.

It’s a deadly circle, with contact breeding obsession, breeding envy. To get such an effect, Marber’s adaptation needs to streamline the book. The biggest loss as a result is the book’s slow, creeping, realisation that Barbara is a deeply arrogant, bitter, unlikeable person who views most of the people around her with contempt. Here Dench’s waspish voiceover immediately makes it clear to the viewer that she is not that nice a person. It’s a shame, as it rather signposts for the viewer where the film may be heading.

The storyline also races through the book (the film is less than 90 minutes) which means it often feels more like a melodrama. While I think it’s a strength that the film doesn’t try and give a real reason for Sheba’s decision to seduce (or be seduced) by her student, other than to hint at her own sense of bohemian freedom being lost at home, I can see how others will find the reasons for why the radiant Sheba is so drawn to such a surly kid rather hard to accept.

But it still works, because the film is so well-played. With Dench and Blanchett at their best (and excellent support from Bill Nighy, quietly superb as Sheba’s husband, a decent guy who can’t believe his luck that he is married to such a wonderful woman, and whose world falls apart in bitter recrimination), it’s a film that gives more than enough rewards. The film gives us a decent ending from the book, with more hope for Sheba – but the balance suggests that for Barbara the cycle of obsession will only continue. Heaven help anyone who sits down on a park bench next to her.

The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)

Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow get wrapped up in murder and mayhem in The Talented Mr Ripley

Director: Anthony Minghella

Cast: Matt Damon (Tom Ripley), Gwyneth Paltrow (Marge Sherwood), Jude Law (Dickie Greenleaf), Cate Blanchett (Meredith Logue), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Freddie Miles), Jack Davenport (Peter Smith-Kingsley), James Rebhorn (Herbert Greenleaf), Sergio Rubini (Inspector Roverini), Philip Baker Hall (Alvin MacCarron), Celia Weston (Aunt Joan)

Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley – sociopath, confidence trickster, human blank piece of paper and murderer – is so unknowable he’s been played on screen by actors as wildly diverse as Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich, Barry Pepper and, perhaps most famously today, by Matt Damon. Ripley’s complexity – Highsmith described him as “suave, agreeable and utterly amoral” – and his general blankness and ability to adapt to different situations make him a challenging character to bring to the screen. Minghella’s film goes for a dark, Hitchcockian feeling drama that gives a lot of focus to feelings of sexual confusion and inadequacy in Ripley that motivate his actions and increasingly spiral out of control, leaving him isolated and damaged.

Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) allows himself to be mistaken by the owner of a shipping line, Herbert Greenleaf (James Rebhorn), as an old Harvard classmate of his son Dickie (Jude Law). Inveigling his way into Herbert’s trust, he is sent to Italy to persuade Dickie to return to America and take up a job in his father’s company. Happily taking the all-expenses-paid trip, Ripley finds himself besotted with the glamour and easy charm of Dickie, a handsome playboy, and soon positions himself as travelling companion to Dickie and his fiancée Marge Sherwood (Gwyneth Paltrow). But Dickie’s attention is only fleeting, and soon Ripley feels betrayed as Dickie starts to refocus elsewhere – leading eventually to Ripley murdering Dickie in a fit of jealous pique and using his faint resemblance to Dickie’s passport photo to assume his identity and live off his allowance – all the while dodging meeting Marge, friends of Dickie and the police (who are searching for the disappeared Tom Ripley).

Minghella’s film is a complex, psycho-sexual thriller, shot with a sun-kissed warmth that accentuates the glamour and style of the Italian Riviera, while subtly keeping us distant from the characters and their increasingly complex motives. The richness and lushness of these expensive lives look as appealing and seductive to us as Ripley finds them when he arrives. However, its dark undertone is never lost, and the film is edited and assembled with a certain chill and coolness while Gabriel Yared’s score mixes some fun jazz remixes with more a ominous tone as the bodies start to pile up.

I love a lot of Minghella’s work. He’s an intelligent and literate director, and the script he prepared for this film shows that he’s a master of taking complex, multi-layered pieces of fiction and turning them into something impressive and cinematic. But watching The Talented Mr Ripley, with its effective mix of period charm and sixties swing, its clever apeing of sixties filming styles, its riffing on Hitchcockian tropes and its picture book locations around Italy, part of me wonders if this film started pushing him too far down the path of being a “literary” director. His film is intelligent, and alternates between being chilling and fun, but at times it’s also wearing its “important film-making” badge a little heavily. It’s like the film is straining a little too much for prestige, as if the luscious design, complex plotting, sharp dialogue and clever visuals are aiming a little too much for matching The English Patient’s Oscar hoovering.

Maybe that’s why, despite everything that is good here, this film doesn’t have quite the same success as that film. This is, I’ll confess, an odd thing to say in a film that is generally very positive – if a little too long – but there it is. Sometimes these things are intangible in a way. Part of the film’s problem is that very complexity of plotting and motivation that he (arguably) builds on from the book. One of the film’s biggest question marks hangs over Ripley himself.

Imagined here as a slightly diffident, awkward, closeted graduate, he never really convinces as the kind of ruthless opportunist the plot demands him to be. Much as the film – and Damon’s performance – nails the sociopathic blankness of Ripley, his ability to switch smoothly from persona to persona, at the same time Ripley either seems to care too much or too little. Damon never quite convinces as a man so in love with the highlife that he is happy living off the allowance of (and pretending to be) the adored friend he bludgeons to death in a boat.

This is where the homosexual undertone of the original has been converted into a overtone – and the film’s overplaying of Ripley’s physical, puppy-dog attraction to Dickie make him feel more dependent. The film works really hard to make him as sympathetic and vulnerable as possible, to make him a victim of his own warped circumstances and morality, and it never quite manages to make this make sense, or to carry real consistency. For all you feel Minghella wants us to think we are drilling into what makes a killer, the more we learn about Ripley the less substantial as a character he feels.

Damon, despite this, gives a good and generous performance. Generous because, playing quite a pathetic, indescribably blank man, he really manages to fade into the background of scenes. It does mean that he cedes most of the best work to his co-stars. Jude Law is radiantly cool, fiery, passionate, selfish and hugely attractive in a star-making turn as Dickie. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the epitome of a Bullingdon club bully turned young adult as Dickie’s school friend, seizing scenes with a louche aggressiveness. Cate Blanchett is equally brilliant as a warm, friendly socialite who inadvertently stirs terrible ideas in Ripley.

These actors are all highlights in a superbly mounted production, but one which doesn’t reveal or tell us as much as we might expect. Instead, Minghella gets slightly lost in his own intelligence when adapting the book, pushing the story into deeper, psycho-sexual motivations for its character that end up obscuring and fudging the actions he carries out in the film. It’s a gorgeous looking film, packed with wonderful scenes, but Damon’s Ripley seems too sensitive, too prone to the edge of tears, impossible to see as a man who could become a serial murderer. By giving a greater hinterland to Ripley, Minghella also changes the character fundamentally. It makes for an interesting development – but Ripley’s desperation, his essential weakness, his lack of control make him feel inconsistent with the setting and plot he is in.

Robin Hood (2010)

Russell Crowe takes aim as Robin Hood

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Russell Crowe (Robin Longstride), Cate Blanchett (Marian Locksley), William Hurt (William Marshal), Mark Strong (Sir Godfrey), Mark Addy (Friar Tuck), Oscar Isaac (Prince John), Danny Huston (King Richard), Eileen Atkins (Eleanor of Aquitaine), Max von Sydow (Sir Walter Locksley), Kevin Durand (Little John), Scott Grimes (Will Scarlet), Alan Doyle (Allan A’Dale), Matthew Macfadyen (Sheriff of Nottingham), Lea Seydoux (Isabella), Douglas Hodge (Sir Robert Locksley)

When this film was developed, it was a CSI style medieval romp called Nottingham. Russell Crowe was cast as the film’s hero – an ahead-of-his-time Sheriff of Nottingham, busting crimes in Olde England and dealing with rogue thief (with good press) Robin Hood. Yes that really was the original idea. Mind you, it would at least have been more original than what we ended up with after Scott and Crowe had a bit of a rethink.

So here we are: Robin Hood: Origins (as it might as well have been called). Russell Crowe is Robin Longstride, on his way back from the crusades as an archer in the army of King Richard (Danny Huston) army. When Richard is killed at a siege in France (it was one last siege before home – what are the odds!), the messengers carrying the news back to France are ambushed and killed by wicked Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong). Robin finds the bodies and assumes the identity of Sir Robert Locksley, travelling to England to tell Prince John (Oscar Isaac) the news of his succession – then returning to Nottingham with his friends, where Robert’s father Sir Walter (Max von Sydow) asks him to continue pretending to be Robin for dull tax reasons – and soon feelings develop between Robin and Sir Robert’s widow Marian (Cate Blanchett). But John is intent on farming the land for taxes, and Sir Godfrey is in cahoots with the French to conquer England.

Robin Hood is a semi-decent, watchable enough retread of a story so totally and utterly familiar that even the things it rejigs end up feeling familiar. In fact, to be honest you sit watching it and wondering why on earth anyone really wanted to make it. Scott brings nothing original and different to it, and the film looks like a less visually interesting retread of Kingdom of Heaven. Plot wise it’s empty. What’s the point of it all? It slowly shows us all the pieces of the Robin Hood myth coming together, so best guess is that it was intended to be the first of a series (there seems to have been no interest or demand for a sequel of any sort).

And then we’ve got Russell Crowe. Leaving aside everything else, Crowe looks about 10 years too old for the part. He delivers some sort of regional accent that meanders from Ireland to Yorkshire in its broadness, a laughable stumble around the country. Crowe does his slightly intense, sub-Gladiator mumbles and stares at the camera and attempts to suggest a deep rooted nobility, but actually comes across a bit more like a snoozing actor awaiting a pay-cheque.

Cate Blanchett does her best, lending her prestige to the whole thing in an attempt to make it land with some dignity (she of course does the opening and closing narration, which struggles to add some sort of grandeur to the whole flimsy thing). She’s saddled with a Maid Marian who is granted various “action” moments, but still has to be saved by Robin and face possible rape from a leering Frenchman (at least she saves herself from that one).

It also doesn’t help either actor that their romance plays out in the dull middle third of the film, where the plot grinds to a halt as we deal with Sir Walter (Max von Sydow almost literally acting blindfolded) using Robin as some sort of tax dodge scheme. The film is overloaded with characters, all of whom are separated at this point and struggling manfully to make their disconnected plotlines interesting: so we get John dealing with the pressures of office, Sir Godfrey scheming and looting, William Marshal trying to find a middle ground, Robin and Marian falling in love – it’s a mess. On top of this a get a ludicrous reworking of the Magna Carta as some Medieval version of the Communist Manifesto (it’s written by Robin’s executed dad no less, giving him a bizarre “painful backstory” to overcome). None of these plots really come together, and so little time is spent with each of them that they all end up getting quite boring.

The film culminates in a totally ridiculous battle scene on a beach, as Sir Godfrey’s French allies arrive on the shores of medieval England in some sort Saving Private Ryan landing craft. The tactics of this landing and the battle that ensues are complete nonsense. Every single character rocks up at this battle, which should feel like all the plot threads coming together but instead feels like poor script-writing. When Marian turns up, disguised as a man (how very Eowyn), leading a group of warrior children (I’m not joking) who feel yanked from the pages of Lord of the Flies, it’s just the crowning turd on this nonsense.

And all this fuss to defeat Sir Godfrey? Why cast Mark Strong and give him such a nothing part? Sir Godfrey is a deeply unintimidating villain. Everything he does goes wrong. He is bested in combat no less than three times in the film (once by a flipping blind man!). His motivations are never even slightly touched upon. He has less than one scene with John, the man who he is supposed to be manipulating. He runs away at the drop of a hat and Robin gets the drop on him twice on the film. He’s neither interesting, scary or feels like a challenging adversary or worthy opponent.

But then nothing in this film is particularly interesting. The set-up of the merry men around Robin (they seem more like an ageing band of mates on tour by the way than folk looking to rob from the rich and give to the poor) is painfully similar to dozens of other film, particularly in the Little-John-and-Robin-fight-then-become-brothers routine. Crikey even Prince of Thieves shook up the formula by making Will Scarlet Robin’s brother. Scott is going through the motions, like it was one he was committed to so needed to see through to the end despite having long-since lost interest. It’s not a terrible movie really, just a really, really, really average one with a completely miscast lead and nothing you haven’t seen before.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Gandalf prepares to take on many foes – not least the script and editing – in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins), Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakenshield), Luke Evans (Bard), Evangeline Lilly (Tauriel), Orlando Bloom (Galadriel), Aiden Turner (Kili), Lee Pace (Thranduil), Ken Stott (Balin), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel), Ian Holm (Old Bilbo), Graham McTavish (Dwalin), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Hugo Weaving (Elrond)

I feel like I’m running out of things to say about this desperately flawed trilogy – but here we go… Peter Jackson finally finishes his great contractual obligation, serving up another film that expands out a slim couple of chapters of a children’s book into something that strains so heavily for the feel of something epic and world shattering, it feels like a constipated man struggling on the loo.

We’ve finally made it to the Lonely Mountain. Smaug is killed by Bard (Luke Evans) during his attack on Lake Town, while Thorin (Richard Armitage) seizes control of the fortune under the mountain. However, the mountain now becomes a struggle point between the dwarves and their allies: Bard and his people and Thranduil (Lee Pace) and his elves, who are all looking to gain control of its treasures. While Bilbo (Martin Freeman) attempts to make an increasingly maddened Thorin see sense, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) brings warning of an imminent attack by an army of Orcs – will this mutual enemy bring our heroes together at last?

The Battle of the Five Armies is the moment where you knew this sprawling, sausage-fest of a trilogy had lost what soul it had. Almost the entire runtime is given over to battle sequence, seems to go on forever and ever with no respite. We see a host of clashes that carry none of the poetry of The Lord of the Rings, and a host of characters we don’t really know fighting with each other. Frankly, it’s hard to care. It looks great, but it’s just empty spectacle, sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing at all. In fact, it’s all so unclear that watching this movie for a third time I still have absolutely no fucking idea what this battle is even about! What are the Orcs doing? Why are they attacking?

As always character moments are constantly sacrificed. The dwarf company are ruthlessly trimmed of screen time–even Ken Stott’s Balin doesn’t get much of a look, bizarre as he’s been established previously as Thorin’s confidant. Apparently James Nesbitt nearly wept when he saw this film – not surprising since he must barely be on screen for more than five minutes. Crucial moments that should make us care about these characters are constantly lost: Thorin’s descent into madness occurs completely off camera, Gandalf’s struggle to keep the peace gets glanced over, Bilbo nearly gets completely lost in the shuffle from special effect to special effect.

Tragically, far too much screen time is given to two characters Jackson has parachuted into the film. Weaselly Lake Town official Alfrid is given seemingly endless scenes of “comic relief” – a shame since he’s about as funny as being hit in the mouth by a hammer. I understand Jackson must find this character funny, and that he felt some comic relief was needed amongst all the fighting – but quite frankly he’s wrong. Alfrid is not funny – I think you’d go a long way to find anyone who liked him – and secondly if they needed comic relief characters, why not let one of the dwarves fill that function rather than introducing a new character 2/3rds of the way into the story?

The second character who gets far too much to do is our old friend Legolas. The elf’s plot line is given never-ending minutes of screen time, his struggles and conflicts given (it feels) even more screentime than Bilbo’s. Do we really need to see Legolas searching for the orcs? Do we really need to see him doing ridiculously impossible feats in the middle of combat? Are we given any reason to care about him at all, other than the fact we remember him from Lord of the Rings?

Legolas’ inclusion demonstrates almost everything wrong in this series. Did Jackson include so much of him because he didn’t need to think quite so much about what to do with the character, being already so familiar with him? When Legolas (at best a secondary supporting character in the story) has his battle with some random Orc, intercut (and even prioritised in the edit) over Thorin’s climactic battle with Azog, the clash the entire trilogy has been building towards, you know something is seriously wrong.

On top of which, Legolas’ inclusion undermines Jackson’s other big invention, the Legolas-Tauriel-Kili love triangle. Really this should be a Tauriel-has-to-marry-Legolas-but-wants-to-marry-Kili structure – that at least would work, right? We’d understand her struggle and division – and it would add a lot more weight to her feelings for Kili. Instead, Jackson is worried this might make Legolas look unsympathetic – so instead Tauriel is sorta in love with both with them, a confused, messy structure that makes no real sense. To add insult to injury, when Tauriel and Kili are threatened by random nasty Orc, who saves the day? Legolas. Who fights Tauriel’s battles for her? Legolas. Jackson introduces a love triangle, and then undermines it because he doesn’t want to criticise his beloved character. He introduces a female character, only to reduce her to a victim obsessed with lurve. It’s a disaster.

You feel Jackson threw in this plot because not a lot actually happens in this movie. Doubly annoying then that so many plots we do care about disappear so swiftly. The Arkenstone, the cause of so much struggle, is completely forgotten half-way through. The fate of Bard and the Lake Town survivors is glossed over. The dwarves get benched from the action for ages. The plotline around the Necromancer is wrapped up with embarrassing and confusing swiftness. Thorin’s plotline is rushed together at the edges, with the focus constantly on getting more fighting in shot.

It’s a real shame that the actors don’t get the time they deserve to really let their performances flourish. Armitage is, as always, superb as a Thorin who loses himself in greed and desire for gold, and becomes cruel and bitter before remembering his nobility. Martin Freeman is still great as Bilbo, honest, normal and delightful despite being given little to do. Ian McKellen still has all the Gandalf qualities of wisdom and grandfatherly authority. Among the rest of the cast, Luke Evans continues to be a stand-out as the noble Bard.

There are moments of action that really work. Smaug’s attack on Lake Town is the film’s dramatic highlight – shame its over in 12 minutes. But it’s brilliantly shot, has moments of heroics and looks great. Thorin and Azog’s battle really works because Thorin is just about the only character in the film we really care about. But much of the rest of the fighting is just silly – gravity-defying bashing (Legolas and Saruman are particularly guilty of this) or never-ending struggles in the battle itself – in which by the way, only men seem to be allowed to be seen doing anything brave.

The Battle of the Five Armies is in many ways a fitting conclusion to the series. Millions of dollars are spent on making a brilliantly designed and shot series of images. But no time is spent on making us care about anything. We invest almost nothing emotionally in the story at all. While we might be a bit sad at seeing people die, we know so little about many of them their deaths hardly stick with us. Why did Jackson not see this? Yes Lord of the Rings was a masterpiece and tough act to follow – but when you see the love and care dripping from every frame of that 12 hour trilogy, and then you move to this mess, you can’t help but think: where did it go wrong? It’s not a complete disaster – the films are always watchable – but they could have been so much more. Instead, they’re the bloated, incoherent footnotes to a great trilogy.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

Martin Freeman goes on An Unexpected Journey in the first of Peter Jackson’s deeply flawed trilogy

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins), Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakensheild), Ken Stott (Balin), Graham McTavish (Dwalin), Aidan Turner (Kili), Dean O’Gorman (Fili), James Nesbitt (Bofur), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel), Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Christopher Lee (Saruman), Ian Holm (Old Bilbo), Elijah Wood (Frodo Baggins), Sylvester McCoy (Radagast), Andy Serkis (Gollum), Manu Bennett (Azog the Defiler), Lee Pace (Thranduil), Benedict Cumberbatch (Necromancer)

The little-loved Hobbit films are finished now. This may be a controversial statement, but looking back at the three films now, An Unexpected Journey is clearly the best of an average bunch, the only one that feels like it has some sort of story arc, where the padding isn’t too overbearing and we get some character moments. Despite all that, it’s (bless) a bit of a mess. A tragic missed opportunity, which are like bloated windy farts that follow through.

So. It’s three films. We all know it shouldn’t be. We all know it’s a slight kids’ book. So let’s take it as read that even this, the best of the bunch, is an over-extended three hour expansion of six chapters (six bloody chapters!) of the original kids’ fable. Never, at any point, does this feel like it needs to be a long film. Where is the depth and passion in this film? It’s a slow, slow, quick, quick, slow paced splat, which takes ages and ages and ages to get going and then runs through as many set-piece action scenes as possible.

Why did Peter Jackson make these films? Honestly, watching it you feel he had a gun to his head. He can’t bring any love or depth of feeling to huge chunks of the film. The action scenes feel put together by a choreographer and designed to be as loud and broad as possible, rather than because they are being put together by a storyteller.

Thirteen dwarves? This is one of the main reasons Jackson was worried about making this film. How could he make these characters distinctive? How could he build plot arcs and storylines for each one? The answer was he couldn’t. So he didn’t even bother. Now I know the Tolkien fans would have hit the roof, but for goodness’ sake would it not have been better for the good of the film to cut the number of dwarves down? So we could get to know them a bit? Because large numbers of these dwarves are indistinguishable from the other. Throughout the course of this film, as a stand-alone viewing experience, only Thorin and Balin stand out in any way as immediately recognisable. They are the only two who you can always identify. The rest? They just all mash into one. They don’t even really have distinctive moments. They are just a mass.

So you watch the overblown, overextended and yawn-worthy action and chase scenes and you just can’t get wrapped up in them. Because all we are doing is watching huge, time-consuming sequences with a mass of characters we can’t tell about, and even when we do, we don’t have any emotional connection to them. The dwarves are all sort of refugees I guess, which gives us some sort of link to them, but it’s the same back story for each one. It’s indistinctive and unclear. If Jackson had gone with his gut and cut some of these out, then the extended running time could have been used to build establishing character moments, to give pay-offs and plot arcs for them. Instead, he kept them all – and never develops any of them.

Those action scenes do go on forever. I know they all come from the book, I get it, but there is no tension in any of them. Dwarves bounce, twirl and fly all over the place. Never at any point do they really feel like they are in danger. A run over the field from some wolves – yawn. The chase sequence through the Goblin kingdom in a mine – double yawn. The second is particularly bad as it brings back strong memories of the LOTR sequence in the Mines of Moria, which had a hundred times the excitement and thrills of this.

In fact that reminiscence is a big problem for a large chunk of the film. The Hobbit is a kids’ book, but The Lord of the Rings is an adult fantasy novel. The attempt to tie these two different tones and genres of novel is a constant hiccup. So we get the dwarves pratting around and bouncing about, in moments that seem childish and cheap. And then we get doom-laden conversations, and dark over-blown musings about the stakes of the world – stakes that don’t tie in, in any way, with the content of the action, adventure story we are seeing in the film. Then there are blatant, clumsy references back to the original – did anyone else groan when Elijah Wood wandered onto the screen? Appearances from Blanchett, Weaving and Lee are all shoe-horned in. At least Ian Holm gets to do some lovely narration. But all these moments simply remind you that you could be watching a better film trilogy than this.

But despite all this, An Unexpected Journey isn’t all bad. Yes it hares about so quickly, with no depth at all, at great over blown length, but it has its moments and it is just about entertaining enough. Jackson can still do some of these moments well – the flashback that opens the film to Smaug’s attack on the mountain is very well done; in fact it has more inspired film-making and tension than nearly anything else that follows. Yes the arrival of the dwarves takes a lot longer to get going than the film needs – but at least it’s pretty charming, and Jackson’s whimsical love of Hobbiton is pretty clear. Shame I don’t think he brought any more invention or sense of charm to much of the rest.

It’s also helped by the fact there are some damn fine performances in there. Martin Freeman is just about perfect casting as Bilbo; he’s charming, vulnerable, slightly-out-of-his depth, brave, very English – he’s great. Ian McKellen practically is Gandalf by now, and he hasn’t lost his understanding of the character’s slightly grubby, grandfatherly charm. Richard Armitage as Thorin is brilliant, mixing a gruff, maverick quality alongside his pride and resolution – and his intense sense of loyalty. Of the rest of the cast, not many get a look-in, being either cameos or underdeveloped, but Ken Stott stands out as the kindly, wise Balin.

The film is also possibly the only one of the three that truly stands alone in some way. It has some form of plot arc behind it in the relationship between Thorin and Bilbo, and the lack of trust Thorin has for Bilbo, his unwillingness to accept him into the group. Similarly, Bilbo has to learn to embrace his role with the dwarves and his place in the company. This is actually a pretty touching and carefully done dynamic, that culminates not only in the film’s most involving (and tellingly low-key) action sequence, but also a tender moment of acceptance from the previously stand-offish Thorin (brilliantly sold by Armitage).

This is a great plot arc. It also has a negative impact on the next two films – because this is the emotional climax in many ways of the trilogy – and it came in the first film of three! With this major emotional plot line between two of our core characters resolved by the end of the first third of the sequence, what is there to do with the rest of it? It’s a major loss for the rest of the trilogy.

But for this stand-alone film it works well. Because it reminds you there is some heart in this film – heart missing from the next two films – because it is founded on an understandable emotional bond. The rest of the company may be indistinguishable, but at least Thorin and Bilbo move us. The best moments in these films are founded on feeling and character investment. Andy Serkis makes a great return as Gollum in an entertaining exchange with Freeman. The clash between Thorin and Azog is the most engrossing in the film because it has a genuine history to it established in the film, that a zillion clashes with the Goblin King, or a pack of wolves or faceless goblins never do.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a decent movie. It has flashes of excellence in it. It’s got some good performances. Peter Jackson is still able to shoot a decent scene, even if you don’t really feel his heart is completely in it. The performances are uniformly good, and some are excellent. But the whole thing feels like an overblown missed opportunity. There was a chance to do something magic here with this Hobbit series. But this wasn’t it. You can’t cast the same trick twice.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Thor and Hulk: It’s the buddy movie you’ve been waiting for

Director: Taika Waititi

Cast: Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Cate Blanchett (Hela), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Jeff Goldblum (Grandmaster), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Karl Urban (Skurge), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner/Hulk), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Rachel House (Topaz), Taika Waititi (Korg)

The Marvel franchise is now on to 17 films. That’s 17 films all in the same universe, with at least three more to come in the next year or so. The weight of franchise backstory has started to feel overbearing, with so many other films to tie into and characters to set up that the individual film itself is left with barely any identity or purpose. How refreshing then to have a film that cuts loose and takes a slightly different tone: a genuine action comedy. Thor: Ragnarok is so tonally different from the other Thor films (let alone the other films in the series) it actually manages to feel like its own beast – it’s as close to a director-led vision as the franchise has got.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been all over the universe, working to stop Ragnarok (the prophesised end of Asgard). Returning to Asgard, he unmasks his troublesome step-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) who has been disguised as Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Travelling to Earth to rescue their dying father, they arrive in time to see his death. Unfortunately, this releases their elder sister Hela, Goddess of Death (Cate Blanchett). While Hela ruthlessly conquers Asgard, Thor is trapped on the planet Sakaar and forced to enter a deadly gladiatorial contest – against his Avenger ally the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) – all while trying to escape back to Asgard to stop Hela.

Thor: Ragnarok has a plot that ambles at points rather than sprints. But this hardly matters, as its main focus is on entertaining the audience. Waititi creates a sort of punk 1980s wildness, mixed with a fun-loving wit. The result is a film with action, and high stakes – but never takes itself too seriously. It perfectly understands how to puncture grandeur or pomposity of the Asgardian gods with a neat one-liner or a bit of everyday conversational inanity (a lot of the latter comes from Waititi himself, hilariously playing chilled out rock gladiator Korg).

Waititi also allows Hemsworth to let rip with his comic timing rip in a way he’s scarcely been allowed to do since Branagh’s original. It drops the faux-Shakespearean seriousness of Thor: The Dark World, and Hemsworth repositions the character in a more relaxed and charming style. From his opening introduction, undercutting the monologing of a fire demon with a dry series of puns while dangling from a ceiling in chains, he finds a neat balance between seriousness and charisma. Waititi is also (like Branagh) not afraid to let Asgard’s mightiest warrior be the butt of a few sight gags – one laugh out loud moment involving a very strong window is a stand out. Hemsworth demonstrates here he’s a far more accomplished comedian (physically and verbally) than he gets credit for.

This more relaxed Thor is perfect for the rock-and-roll feel of the film. Expertly scored (there is particularly fine use of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song) it has a groovy, 1980s feel. The planet Sakaar is a primary-coloured, odd-alien filled, campy explosion of energy and vibrant punky fun. Said planet is run by the Grandmaster, played by Jeff Goldblum at his most Jeff Goldblumiest ever – if you can picture that you’ve got the tone of the whole planet. This neon lit style is reminiscent of everything from Flash Gordon to The Last Starfighter.

The film’s loose comic style also allows a series of fun match-ups, from Thor and Loki (a wonderfully weaselly, fun Tom Hiddleston – still one of the best things in this whole franchise), to Thor and Strange (a lovely cameo from Cumberbatch), Thor and Valkyrie (a neat mixture of drunken self-loathing and female Thor-ness from Tessa Thompson) and lastly Thor and Hulk. The latter provides a lot of the film’s comic gold, the Hulk finally turned into some sort of character with achildish vulnerability and swagger (though the film still finds time for a Hulk penis gag). Waititi also throws in some nice call-backs to previous films – the bunch here set themselves up as the Revengers, while there are multiple references to the mantra used to calm the Hulk in Avengers: Age of Ultron – without making it feel in-jokey.

There is so much fun in the film, you almost forget the main plot of the film is fairly heavy-going, end-of-the-world stuff. For a Marvel film there is a large body count of recurring characters (at least four bite the bullet here), while Hela’s plot encompasses mass slaughter and destruction. Scenes with Hela are kept short (structurally the film effectively strands her on Asgard to contain her invincibility), so it’s just as well the part is played with such charismatic dryness and imperious arrogance by Cate Blanchett (easily the best Marvel villain since Loki). She’s ably backed up by Karl Urban, adding a lot of complexity to reluctant cowardly turncoat Skurge. Waititi shoots Hela’s rampage of destruction with an exciting dynamism – it’s an action scene that feels different, no mean feat in a franchise that has had so many fights.

In fact most of the action feels very fresh, the fights never out-stay their welcome, and there are some brilliant visual flourishes – the final battle in particular throws in some almost painterly images as Thor and his allies take on Hela’s zombie army. The arena fight between Hulk and Thor is about a million times more interesting than the dull Hulkbuster battle between Iron Man and Hulk in the past Avengers film as Watiti keeps the focus on character rather than pummelling. The film also manages to keep the stakes high – there are always innocent people our heroes fight to protect.

Thor: Ragnarok might well be the most entertaining, fun film Marvel has produced. It’s almost certainly the best Thor film. While The Dark World failed dismally to build on the mixture of earnestness and comedy in Branagh’s original, this one feels like a natural progression of the first, amping everything up into a vibrant, 1980s styled cocktail of action and fun. It’s terrifically entertaining, well paced, anchored in characters we care about, and it just wants to entertain the viewer. You’d have to be pretty cold for it not to succeed.

Carol (2015)

Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett in a moving dance of love and romance

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: Cate Blanchett (Carol Aird), Rooney Mara (Therese Belivet), Sarah Paulson (Abby Gerhard), Kyle Chandler (Harge Aird), Jake Lacy (Richard Semco), John Magaro (Dannie McElroy), Cory Michael Smith (Tommy Tucker), Carrie Brownstein (Genevieve Cantrell)

It’s the way of things that gay love-stories in Hollywood are invariably relegated to a sub plot – often one that has a certain tragical element to it. This is not the case here in Todd Haynes’ superlative romance, which places a lesbian love story at its centre, sensitively building the characters and romantic journey between them.

Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is a lost department store worker, drifting through life. One Christmas, working on the toy stall, she recommends a toy for the daughter of socialite Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). A spark of attraction between the two is immediately apparent, and Carol invites Therese first to dinner, then to spend an evening together and finally a Christmas road trip across America, during which their attraction grows and deepens into a flourishing love.

This wonderful love story, almost a twist on Brief Encounter, is a brilliantly done, extremely engrossing and moving romantic film, a film that manages the rare feat in Hollywood movies of not making a homosexual relationship something that requires narrative punishment. Haynes’ luscious 1950s filming style, stressing the aesthetics and manners of the era, combines brilliantly with a subtly murky photography style that darkens and lightens at different points to create an immersive fairy-tale quality. It’s a perfect tapestry for a deeply caring and sensitive story, anchored by a superb script and wonderful performances.

It has now got to the point where it is axiomatic to say Cate Blanchett gives a wonderful performance – she is, after all, one of the best actresses in the world right now. She is quite simply perfectly cast as Carol, her features having the flexibility to appear both cold and distant and soft and caring, a switch she is able to make with the slightest of gestures. Her patrician manner is deconstructed brilliantly. Her character is initially established as an almost predatory figure, a determined and manipulative woman; it’s only over the course of the film that this persona is slowly taken apart, revealing waves of emotion and pain from years of denial, loneliness and a sense of being trapped. Each scene slowly prompts us to reassess and reevaluate her character, and Blanchett handles this journey with astounding skill, revealing a hinterland of pained, self-doubting isolation and desperation to experience real love behind her cool and confident exterior. It’s a performance of phenomenal skill and emotional force.

It’s matched brilliantly by Rooney Mara as the object of Carol’s affections – and it must be said at the very least a co-lead of the film. Therese is a woman sleepwalking through life when we first see her, trotting through the motions of her interactions with others – a clear void in her, waiting for something to happen to her, but clearly with no idea of what that might be. Similar to Blanchett, Mara’s gentle and sensitive exterior deepens over the course of the film as she becomes more assertive to those around her, more of a determiner of what she wants from her own life. Mara’s soulful eyes and gentle face make her a perfect audience surrogate, creating a character whose feelings, doubts, anxieties and growing confidence we become immersed in. The film is in many ways her story, and Mara’s expressive gentleness is vital to our investment in the story.

The road trip at the heart of the movie’s plot is a charming, lyrical dance between two people juggling an unspoken attraction: one of them on the edge of all times of saying it, the other drawn towards an attraction she is still trying to understand and express. Haynes perfectly captures the small playful moments of first love that pepper these scenes, the camera intimately placed to make us part of this growing partnership of equal minds and hearts. Slowly they grow physically closer – both in their ease of body language, and through their slow progress towards sharing hotel rooms and finally (in an achingly romantic scene) a bed.

It’s a film about romantic longing between two people, the instant attraction. Therese’s first glance of Carol is across a crowded room, with the camera panning past Carol in a POV shot and then returning to her, before cutting back to Therese, now seemingly alive with an attraction she doesn’t quite understand. The Brief Encounter structure of the film is established with the film opening with Carol and Therese’s (possible) last meeting in a dinner. We see their interrupted conversation leading to Carol’s departure, leaving after touching a hand on Therese’s shoulder – the camera lingering on Therese’s back and her unseen reaction (and contrasting it with a meaningless similar touch from a male friend). When this scene is replayed later, we see it more from Carol’s perspective – and her pulsating emotion and longing.

The reason these scenes work so well is that the film continually shows Carol and Therese struggling to hide their growing attraction in plain sight, to maintain the balance between expressing their feeling and keeping a plausible deniability. This feeling grows because the film has the patience to take its time with building this relationship– and because we are aware of Therese’s feelings earlier than she is.

The film’s sensitivity extends to the sympathy it feels for all its characters. As useless as many of the men in the story are, they are confused, distressed or lonely rather than malicious or cruel. Carol’s husband Harge could have been a bullying monster, but he actually comes across as a frustrated and deeply hurt man, who understands on some level his wife’s sexual preferences, but is unable to fully comprehend the implications of this. On paper it’s a thankless part, but Kyle Chandler is superb, his Mad Men features perfectly suited to the role of floundering masculine figure. Many of Therese’s would-be suitors are similarly drawn reasonably sympathetically, however laddy, over-keen or dull they may be – Haynes’ film has an understanding that they are products of their time. In a lovely scene Therese talks about homosexuality with one of her male suitors, who can barely countenance its existence, as if she was talking about the man in the moon.

Haynes’s mastery of the aesthetics of the material is present throughout. Haynes increases the feelings of being trapped or surrounded by a number of shots through windows, using mirrors, from the other side of doors – divides that stress the characters’ sense of being trapped and enclosed in their lives. He also carries across just a small teasing touch of the melodrama of 1950s films – though I would argue this is no way a melodramatic film – with a gun making a deliberately misleading appearance, and a few beats that briefly suggest the film is heading in an entirely different direction.

Carol is a wonderful, soulful and entrancing film. It’s about two people showing each other hidden depths about themselves, uncovering truths and building each other’s capacity for love and ability to admit and understand their feelings. It makes this a tender and endearing film, with two characters whose fates we become completely involved with. It also avoids passing any form of judgement over any of the characters. Filled with subtle moments, open to interpretations (even their first meeting is full of code, from the recommendation of a non-gender-conforming train set to Carol’s gloves left invitingly on the counter) that constantly ask us to review how open we feel the characters are being with themselves and others. With brilliant performances by Mara and Blanchett (backed by Chandler and a very sensitive performance from Sarah Paulson as Carol’s former lover), this wonderful film is both profoundly moving and very uplifting.