Carol suffers from Agraphobia, a morbid fear of sexual assault, her eyes
revealing the repulsion that lurks in the dark recesses of her psyche. This
beautiful young lady sleepwalks through her life as she slowly descends into
madness, consumed with dread of being isolated from her sister and of the men
whose leering gaze often caress her delicate form.
Director Roman Polanski has crafted a psychological maelstrom of anxiety
and suspense, physically distancing the viewer from Carol while allowing us to
experience her intense delusions from her psychotic perspective. She becomes
fearful of every man: her sister Helen’s boyfriend, Colin a young man who
continually asks her out on dates, and the sleazy landlord (for good reason).
It’s no coincidence she works in a beauty shop surrounded by women, a haven
that separates her from potential male contact. When Helen goes on vacation for
ten days, Carol is left alone, emotionally skinned like a dead rabbit, and
eaten by paranoia and panic.
Aural hallucinations precede her violent fantasies where ghostly men haunt
dark mirrors, rise from the convolutions of disheveled night sheets, or their
waxy hands extruding from the walls to steal her sanity. Polanski has crafted a
genuine horror film without a supernatural element, the terror of a mind
turning in upon itself unable to separate truth from fiction: it’s in this
cortex of soft tissue that real monsters exist who devours our perceptions.
With riveting suspense, Polanski films the final act of madness in Carol’s
tiny apartment with sweating close-ups and skewed angles, converging with
sudden acts of unexpected violence and bloodshed. Carol’s senses are spiked by
the tolling of a church bell or the shrill tremulousness of a phone and haunted
by the hungry buzzing of flies. Night after night she imagines herself being
raped by ethereal men, their faces momentarily revealed to be her
acquaintances, until she finally commits two very real acts of murder.
Soon discovered comatose and surrounded by gawking neighbors, it’s a man
who gently carries her towards help. Polanski then unveils the final clue in a
stark black and white photograph of Carol’s childhood: with shadows obscuring
the face of her father, her sister’s head upon his lap, Carol stands behind
them staring vacantly into the void of her incestuous prison.
Final Cut: (A)
