30 Days of Carol: Day 22 – Guess Who’s Unimpressed by Carol

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click for all 30 Days of Carol

Wow. Day 22. We’ve already seen and experienced so much. Just in the past week we’ve witnessed the beginnings of Carol: Tokyo Drift, done some character study deep dives into Therese’s manager and Carol herself, welcomed Paris Jackson and Cara Delevigne as members of the Carolhead nation, and someone sent me a video of themselves as Carol! Truly wild. I’m not ashamed to say that I feel closer to all of you (twelve people who comment).

Except there’s one person who’s unimpressed by all of it:

https://giphy.com/gifs/2tNstPSMYK3dSyXv8Z

The Christmas tree sales girl. If you’ve never noticed this girl, it’s understandable. What’s happening to the left of her is this pang-inducing moment of longing, us as Therese taking in Carol’s powder blue leather glove sweeping back her curls after a flash of self-awareness.

But what’s behind this girl’s eyes is true nothingness. It’s the definition of unmoved. This is the stare of a dentist’s office lobby. What’s playing in this girl’s head is “Mad World” by Gary Jules on some all-around-me-are-familiar-faces-worn-out-places-worn-out-faces-hide-my-head-I-want-to-drown-my-sorrow-no-tomorrow-no-tomorrow stillness.

This is how middle schoolers look at community theater actors who are putting on a performance in their gym. Brutal. It’s what you experience the moment you lock eyes with a Dairy Queen worker who’s been made to flip your blizzard ice cream upside down to show you that it’s so thick that even gravity can’t make it budge. This is middle-aged wives looking at the husbands they’ve come to hate telling a joke they’ve heard for the 18th time at a dinner party.

I’m not even talking about this girl’s character – the girl herself. She’s taking in Cate Blanchett as Carol with the calloused distance of a seasoned P.E. teacher watching a kindergarten graduation. Imagine. Having this in front of you and treating it like the big reveal of trying on a shirt your grandmother got you. May god have mercy on her soul.

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Erin

Los Angeles based writer. Let's keep it clean out there!

Erin has written 208 articles for us.

69 Comments

  1. That is not the look of a small child, it is the look of a demon who has spent countless eternities practicing possession spells, only to realize that they mistakenly ended up in the wrong fur-coated, behatted body, and now they can’t get back out again.

    If you had spent aeons dreaming of having/being Carol/Cate, only to be get so close and yet so far, this is exactly the look you’d be wearing too.

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  2. She looks hangry to me. I bet this was the 18th take right before lunch; she was itching to head over to craft services but they kept delaying her.

    OR

    Maybe she’s a pint-sized animal rights activist tempted to pour red paint on Blanchett’s coat.

    Reply to This Comment

  12. She probably caught the cold that her brother has (I always have an internal Yikes when I see Carol handing him a kleenex).

    But there she is, sitting in the cold and damp with her coat wide open and without a scarf. That really contributes to the general aura of her not being happy at all.

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  13. Erin

    Danger

    What if, at the end of 30 days of carol, when you’ve deconstructed from the outside in and the inside out, WHAT IF YOU GET TRAPPED AS THE NEXT CHRISTMAS TREE SALES GIRL

    what if that’s the face of the last reviewer who got too familiar with the movie?

    Reply to This Comment

  14. Tbh, I can relate to Christmas Tree Girl. This is how I look about 90% of the time. I used to have a friend who would sometimes get annoyed because he’d tell me something he thought I would be excited by and I would react with a detached, “Cool.” And I really did think it was cool!! And I was excited! I’m just broken. Broken just like Christmas Tree Girl.

    DON’T TELL US TO SMILE, ERIN.

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  15. Deeply unrelated to this amazing character study, but Erin, I just want you to know that two friends and I are considering doing a Carol-style road trip from Chicago to Cincinnati to creep on all the filming locations.
    My two friends are a Carol and a Therese, respectively, and I am an Abby, so this is gonna be a great time.

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  19. I don’t like Carol for Christmas,
    She’s acting real bad,
    I don’t like Carol for Christmas,
    And my face is showing that I’m mad

    I’m done with Carol’s crap,
    Erin snitched on me,
    I wanna give a real hard slap,
    Erin snitched on me,
    This isn’t resting bitch face,
    I just wanna get out of this place,
    Erin snitched on me

    Reply to This Comment

  24. Maybe she is just trying to keep it cool. All I know is that if I had that part the thoughts don’t freak out, keep it cool, and don’t look like an idiot would just be on repeat in my head to the point where I also would have looked like a crazy demon child of the corn.

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