"I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will."

Carrie 19/12/11

Director: Brian De Palma       Writers: Stephen King (novel), Lawrence D. Cohen (adaptation)

1976

            Any film which is based on a book (especially one that launched the career of an enduring and much loved writer) is subject to extra scrutiny than those based on an original screenplay. Questions are asked of it like “Is it better than the novel?” and “What did it change?” or perhaps “Did they get the lead right?” Well I try my very best to ignore these questions and value a film on its own merit, but in Carrie I can confirm that they got the lead dead on. Sissy Spacek stole the role from Amy Irving, who did well in her supporting role as Sue Snell, and did things like sleeping for 3 nights in (fake) blood soaked clothes and being buried in rubble to maintain the authenticity of her performance. And it isn’t a glamorous role either, an actress determined to become a sex symbol would have shied away from the role.

            Director Brian De Palma has made a few remarkable films, and worked with De Niro and Pacino at the height of their powers. He is famous for long takes and elaborate tracking and panning shots, these techniques are present in Carrie, which could be considered his breakthrough film. In fact the film begins with a crane shot, moving through an idyllic scene of high school girls playing volleyball, and then the camera finds Carrie, a waifish, plain girl with straggly, mousy hair. She misses a shot and is derided for ruining the game. She gets politely asked to “eat shit” which is a pretty good indicator that she wasn’t too popular before the game anyway. The camera always seems to be moving through the students in scenes in the high school, either tracking around a classroom or panning to follow a teacher’s face, the students seem to be one big entity. Apart from one of course.

            De Palma often pushes up against the line between stylistic choice and humorous exaggeration, and this is true of the next scene. We are in the girls’ locker room, again moving through the students until we find Carrie all alone. In slow motion we see the girls naked, having fun and laughing, and then we see Carrie in the shower. Still in slow-motion we see close-ups of her body as she washes, the screen is filled with it and we are reminded how important bodies are to teenagers, especially girls, especially in the locker room. Carrie almost looks happy, until she gets her first period. She reacts like she has been shot. Cruelly the others shout at her to “plug it up” and throw tampons. Carrie is clueless and hysterical, the result of a mother who sheltered her so much she doesn’t know what her own body does. In the confusion a light bulb shatters as Carrie screams, and this is a sign of something awakening.

            As the film goes on we meet Carrie’s mother, who is quite strange and gives zero fucks about it. We get to know her classmates, Sue (Amy Irving) who feels guilty and so asks Tommy (William Katt) to take Carrie to the prom, and Chris (Nancy Allen) who sexually manipulates Billy (John Travolta) in to helping with a ‘prank’ to humiliate Carrie. All the while Carrie’s gym teacher Miss Collins (Betty Buckley) is trying to get her out of her shell. While Miss Collins punishes the popular girls on the athletic field, where they will have so often punished Carrie, Carrie herself is learning of her body’s new power in the library, a safe haven for the unpopular. After her body’s betrayal in the shower, the power in her mind is now giving her an advantage.

            When Tommy asks her to the prom Carrie sees a trick and runs, Miss Collins sees a trick and tells Sue to back off, and we are probably thinking the same thing. The pleading in Carrie’s eyes as he continues to ask makes it look like someone being kind is much more difficult to take than cruelty. We see the Chris and Tommy like a twisted version of Sandy and Danny in Grease (1978), she constantly calls him “dumbshit” even while he does what she says, and if he complains all the has to do is use her mouth, which De Palma fetishizes  throughout her scenes. She wields her power like a femme fatale and manipulates any guy she needs something from to complete a plan which is quite beyond a high school prank.

            The scene that this film hinges on is at the prom itself, and it works because for just a minute or two we can imagine a happy ending. Carrie and Tommy dance, he is being genuine, she is smiling and beautiful. De Palma has the camera spin sound them looking up into the lights, it is dizzying and makes us think of all her dreams coming true, yet there is a tinge of sickness there too. In slow motion we see Chris’s plan fully revealed, and then chaos ensues, the sound mixing at this point is perfect, drawing the moment out, and putting us in Carrie’s head as all the insults of the past run through it. There is a split screen between Spacek’s haunting visage and the disaster befalling her classmates. This scene is pretty perfect.

            Unfortunately from then on the film seems rushed, and I was saddened that we hadn’t had extra time developing the supporting characters, not much, just a scene here and there. Those scenes were probably shot but got removed; De Palma wasn’t powerful enough a director then to tell the studios what to do. All in all this film is very good, very 70’s and hits people at home.