Carol
Weinstein Company, The | Release Date: November 20, 2015 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
94
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
44
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldDec 25, 2015
You leave the film’s soft-grained world reluctantly, as if taking off a warm coat when it’s still a little chilly inside. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 24, 2015
At its heart, Carol deals with the rules that society imposes on individuals, and the courage necessary to throw those rules out the window. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 24, 2015
It’s possible to watch Carol simply for its velvety beauty, but chances are that, by that stunning final moment, filmgoers will realize with a start that they care far more about the problems of these two people than they might have realized. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianJeff BakerDec 24, 2015
The experience of watching Carol is like being pulled into a different place, real and not real, like the best movies, like being in love. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 24, 2015
Carol is a movie to drink in with eyes, ears, and sensibilities. Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenDec 24, 2015
In Carol, all the elements dovetail perfectly to create a movie that is as irresistible as its title character. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 23, 2015
This excellent film works the way Blanchett's characterization of Carol works: It's meticulous about appearances, while fully aware that appearances can deceive. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 22, 2015
Mara and Blanchett are each extraordinary, working in the most organic and soul-stirring ways. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 10, 2015
Haynes elicits two great performances and provides the perfect frame for them, not just in terms of setting, but through smart casting and attention to the smallest of performances. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 27, 2015
Carol is one of the greatest American screen romances of any era, period – and perhaps that serves as the ultimate vindication of Haynes’ outspoken commitment to “queer cinema.” Read full review
100
Total FilmKevin HarleyNov 23, 2015
Under Haynes’ sure hand, Blanchett and Mara deliver a love story to melt to. Every glance means something, no strain shows: it’s filmmaking as natural as breathing. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 19, 2015
Haynes understands that swooningly beautiful traditional technique bolstered by thrilling performances creates the greatest impact. He has made a serious melodrama about the geometry of desire, a dreamy example of heightened reality that fully engages emotions despite the exact calculations with which it's been made. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensNov 19, 2015
The director Todd Haynes and the novelist Patricia Highsmith fit together like a hand and glove - a beautifully manicured hand and a sleek gray-green leather glove, two images that figure prominently in Carol. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 19, 2015
Haynes' commitment to outcasts, then and now, makes Carol a romantic spellbinder that cuts deep. It's one of the year's very best films. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 19, 2015
At once ardent and analytical, cerebral and swooning, Carol is a study in human magnetism, in the physics and optics of eros. With sparse dialogue and restrained drama, the film is a symphony of angles and glances, of colors and shadows. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsStephen Whitty Nov 18, 2015
It's really a movie about love at first sight, about the dizzying early days of a relationship, about a passion so strong it can't be described, or denied. And that's something everyone can identify with. If they're lucky. Read full review
100
ObserverRex ReedNov 18, 2015
Gorgeously photographed, sensitively written and directed, flawlessly acted, and deeply, intensely important, Carol is Todd Haynes’ most brilliant film since Far From Heaven and one of the triumphs of 2015. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezNov 5, 2015
The movie, shot in lovely, grainy 16mm by cinematographer Ed Lachman, is so elegantly staged you can practically smell the characters’ perfume. Haynes’ direction is methodical and precise without being fussy or oppressive. Every detail has been weighed and considered. Read full review
100
Time Out LondonDave CalhounMay 18, 2015
Gestures, looks and touches carry enormous weight, and Blanchett and Mara, both excellent, invite micropscopic readings of their every glance and movement. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangMay 18, 2015
Made of crystal and suppressed tears, shot eternally through windows and mirrors and half-closed doors, Todd Haynes' Carol is a love story that starts at a trickle, swells gradually to a torrent, and finally bursts the banks of your heart. A beautiful film in every way, immaculately made, and featuring two pristine actresses glowing across rooms and tousled bedclothes at each other like beacons of tentative, unspoken hope. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 18, 2015
Carol is gorgeous, gently groundbreaking, and might be the saddest thing you’ll ever see. More than hugely accomplished cinema, it’s an exquisite work of American art, rippling with a very specific mid-century melancholy, understanding love as the riskiest but most necessary gamble in anyone’s experience. Read full review
100
VarietyJustin ChangMay 18, 2015
Even high expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of Carol, an exquisitely drawn, deeply felt love story that teases out every shadow and nuance of its characters’ inner lives with supreme intelligence, breathtaking poise and filmmaking craft of the most sophisticated yet accessible order. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnMay 18, 2015
A nuanced tale of mutual attraction that reflects a filmmaker and cast operating at the height of their powers, rendering complex circumstances in strikingly personal terms. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 18, 2015
It is a creamily sensuous, richly observed piece of work, handsomely detailed and furnished: the clothes, the hair, the automobiles, the train carriages, the record players, the lipstick and the cigarettes are all superbly presented. The combination of all this is intoxicating in itself. Read full review
95
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeNov 19, 2015
Both haunting and sweeping, Carol represents another masterwork from one of this generation’s great filmmakers. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubMike D'AngeloNov 18, 2015
Haynes has pulled off something remarkable here, without a trace of winking or archness. It’s been a long time since the movies have seen a fuse of pure ardor burn this slowly and steadily, leading to such an unexpectedly moving explosion of resolve. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyNov 12, 2015
Like "Far From Heaven," Carol mines society’s narrow-mindedness and the dangers of living a double life. But what was true more than a half century ago remains true now: The heart wants what it wants, society and propriety be damned. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 24, 2015
Carol is a simple story that sneaks up on you. Todd Haynes takes such care in the telling of it — and the gorgeous depiction of it — that it's impossible not to be moved. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 19, 2015
Loneliness and longing are at the center of these two women’s lives, at least for a while, and they’re expressed by nuance and implication in a pair of superb performances, and by a lovely evocation of the period. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 16, 2015
The film is a casting coup, with Blanchett’s inherent languor —plus that low drawl of hers, a breath away from boredom — played off against the perter intelligence of Mara, whose manner, as always, is caught between the alien and the avian. Read full review
90
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 18, 2015
It’s such stately, evocative, confident filmmaking, the only reservation being that it’s also a bit chilly. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 18, 2015
Blanchett makes an indelible impression as a woman who, through breeding, intense personal cultivation and social expectations, has brilliantly mastered the skill of navigating through life. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 23, 2015
Director Haynes has a knack for framing his characters with just the right touch. There are no throwaway shots in this film. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 7, 2015
Especially during the first 90 minutes, Carol is an immersive experience that invites the viewer to slow down and amble along at its leisurely pace. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyNov 20, 2015
Carol is often about its surfaces, their beauty contrasting with the scary duality of people, relationships. The surfaces in Carol are so seductive that one understands the ache to belong in that world. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickNov 18, 2015
This is in many ways a companion piece to Haynes’ “Far From Heaven” (2002), which remains one of my favorite films so far this century. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 7, 2016
Haynes designs a perfectly nostalgic sensory experience — something like a Manhattan department store window — needing a suppler story to sell. Read full review
83
HitfixGregory EllwoodMay 18, 2015
Only the combined talents of both Blanchett and Mara can make the film's powerfully realized finale work. Read full review
80
EmpireNev PierceNov 23, 2015
Mara and Blanchett make for an unforgettable couple in a beautiful film about longing, loss and the confusion and wonder of love. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 20, 2015
Haynes has calibrated the film so precisely to Blanchett’s talents that he couldn’t have rendered her better with animation. Read full review
80
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekNov 17, 2015
Carol is a film you want to reach out and touch, if only you could reach anywhere near the top of the pedestal it's perched on. It is itself an unattainable love object, the goddess Venus disguised as a movie. Read full review
80
CineVueRory O'ConnorMay 18, 2015
A beautiful entity, near flawless in design, any talk of accolades certainly seems justified. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 25, 2015
Haynes never lifts Carol above over-dressed melodrama. And with every perfect bar where every perfect martini is served, every perfect dive of a motel on the “Lolita” roadtrip that the “just friends” abruptly take together, Carol betrays its true priorities. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineSteve MacfarlaneOct 2, 2015
The film dares its viewers to consider that--for a couple of hours, at least--even when a thing seems too good to be true, it might not be. Read full review
58
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerFeb 3, 2020
The problem is that there is very little chemistry between the actresses, and Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy are far too studied in their depiction of passion. The most impressive performance in the movie is given by Blanchett’s elaborately coiffed, cast-iron hairdo. Read full review
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