In Carrie, a young woman struggles with her mother, her teachers, and even her friends. And then, she kills them all with her mind!
Carrie is a 1976 Brian De Palma adaptation of Stephen King's first novel of the same name. Carrie is definitely a first novel. But it points to one of the major successes of Stephen King's career: when he writes something bad he just keeps writing.
The book isn't bad, but it has a lot of content that isn't central to the plot. And then the biggest most important scenes are some of the worst. In the film, the narrative arc is tight and the most important scenes are the best.
De Palma looked at Carrie, thought "I can fix her" and he was right.
It is not initially clear that Carrie will be an excellent film adaptation. It begins in a locker room full of playful nude young women, and then this scene happens:
(Jazz flute plays)
In the book, this is how Carrie is described:
"Carrie stood among them stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color. It rested against her face with dispirited sogginess and she simply stood, head slightly bent, letting the water splat against her flesh and roll off. She looked the part of the sacrificial goat..."
So, this ties in with a whole animal sacrifice motif in the novel. But, in the film Carrie seems to be having a sexual moment in the shower that is immediately followed by the blood. That connection creates an interesting token of guilt on Carrie's part that makes her mother's accusations in the film a little more cutting. It also enables De Palma to tie this scene to the theme of blood as punishment for desire, and more or less dump the bovine animal sacrifice angle. And lastly, it made for a much sexier intro although it really goes past sexy and into the realm of clownishly thirsty.
"The girl was naked in the shower and she glistened... like a huge metal penis."
The shower-penis scene also introduces a technique that De Palma uses for almost the entire film called Deep Focus. With this technique, an object in the foreground and an object in the background can both be held in focus.
It's not necessarily a subtle technique! But, it can be used to craft dense images that convey incredible amounts of information. There are single shots in Carrie that are whole stories themselves.
Back to the plot: Carrie is having a hot shower and then she starts her period. She freaks out, screams at the other girls, and they all pelt her with tampons.
There's no deep focus here I don't think. Rather, I submit this image in regards to the excellent casting of Sissy Spacek. I assume the call was for someone who could be hot in one scene but uncanny and weird in the next and Sissy Spacek answered the call!
Anyway, the girls all throw tampons at Carrie. She's dismissed from school and goes home to her crazy mother:
You've got pure, innocent Carrie in the foreground, mother in the middle, and then Jesus in the background. And the camera zooms into this scene, so it unfolds in front of you like a pop-up book. It's like watching a mouse enter a snake's cage. Margaret beats Carrie and drags her into a closet with a creepy Jesus statue and tells her not to come out until she's prayed enough. This is the shot of Carrie emerging:
Carrie, a mouse in the background. Margaret pitiless, sinister, sewing like a spider.
From here, the plot bifurcates along the schemes of two girls involved in the locker room scene. One girl, Sue Snell, is ashamed of her role and wants to sacrifice something to make it right. She tells her boyfriend, Tommy, to ask Carrie to prom. Here is the scene where he's thinking about it:
This is my favorite scene in the whole movie. She's studious, secure, in control. He's like a child watching his western but not really watching it. They're both pure and good. They both have PERMS.
On the other side of town, Chris is a bad girl and she wants her boyfriend, Billy, to wreck prom and get Carrie. Here, she hatches the plan in between making out with Billy, slapping him, and sucking his finger:
In the books, this symmetry is used to create kind of a Greek drama between noble and spiteful deities who use an innocent mortal as a pawn in their contest before realizing that the mortal is actually an eldritch terror.
De Palma puts that firmly in the background and brings the romance between Tommy and Carrie to the fore. And you can see why:
Tommy's withering glare is on account of his insensitive English lit teacher. But this shot brings another dynamic into focus: Tommy with his perm and Carrie with the best hair ever. He never stood a chance.
So he asks her to prom:
This is a cool shot. The screen door is used to give Carrie a different texture, like he's speaking into a painting. He's real, he's in focus, he's wearing denim. She's in her mother's biblical nightmare and she's trying to get out.
But Carrie isn't sure, so then the gym teacher who saved her from the mean girls is like:
"Are you kidding? Look at your awesome hair, he doesn't stand a chance!"
As Carrie prepares for prom, her mother looms, a head of dark and agitated coils. Carrie and her effortless locks don't care. She applies makeup in the mirror she broke (and repaired!) with her burgeoning psychic powers, while a picture of Tommy smiles out from a news clipping and Jesus watches from the mirror!
From here, the movie enters a stage where the deep focus technique isn't used as much, but there are still a ton of cool shots.
Like in this scene where Carrie and Tommy are dancing and they start to spin out of control while laughing, and you've got the hint of red in the background. And then there's this sequence:
It's so good. And I didn't even include the whole red ribbon falling from the bucket of blood in the rafters that shows the audience and Sue Snell the trajectory of the blood - right onto Carrie white!
In the book, this scene is completely wasted. She just jumps off the stage "like a bull frog" and freaking runs away! She goes outside and has a cry.
Not in the movie though:
This takes the black silhouette in front of flames from the stage but places it among the black frame of the school cafeteria. In his review, my friend Paul talks about "Control" as a theme in Carrie, and I feel like that particular theme is very present in this scene, in this image.
And the best is yet to come! In the book it's explained that Carrie can imagine the schematics of processes and then operate them with her mind, which is a) horseshit and b) super boring. It's horseshit because she fucks up gas mains and utilities and water systems with her mind. I'm a 43 year old, I don't know what any of that shit looks like. I couldn't accurately imagine the structure of a gas line under the street and even if I could, the part that makes the gas go faster might be miles away! Is that even how it works? I don't know!
And it's boring because in Carrie's big showdown with her mother she just visualizes Margaret's heart and then visualizes it stopping. That is one of the all-time anti-climactic murders in any medium. But have no fear, De Palma is here and he knows just what to do:
First, he has the creepy mother hide in the background of a shot:
Oh fuck, she's behind the door! You can see her crazy hair! Then she kicks Carrie down the stairs, the music goes hysterical, and she comes out and does the sign of the cross:
With a butcher knife!
So Carrie uses her powers and kills mom with kitchen implements including a coup de gras - with a SPATULA. The camera covers her demise up close, but as it pulls back...
Margaret's death mask assumes a peaceful, beatific aspect like an altarpiece painting:
And then it pulls all the way back to a scene that I think words are wasted on:
And as the house collapses around them, Carrie hides in the closet where you can see that her creepy Jesus was stabbed in all the same places as her mother.
I feel like I should provide some analysis or commentary here, but as I watched all this unfold I just thought things like "Fuck yeah!" and "OH WITH A SPATULA" and "Huh, so when she was in there praying she was really just thinking about stabbing her mother."
Wow. What a movie. What an incredible adaptation. I hope they're all this good! And now, questions for Paul:
JD: As we begin this journey, where do you initially think Carrie the film ranks among Stephen King adaptations? Is it top 5?
PH: I refuse to answer this until Maximum Overdrive.
JD: Is the creepy Jesus even a Jesus? I thought someone else got shot with all those arrows.
PH: I actually know this! That's St. Sebastian, and he's the Orion's belt of paintings at any renaissance art museum. You see the arrows, you know the martyr! But that's the only one you ever learn, because most of the other saints, like constellations, kinda seem all the same.
JD: Considering that she's on stage and kills everybody, I feel like Carrie could be a pretty good musical. Which Stephen King book do you think might do the best with musical numbers, and why is it Cujo?
PH: *in ragtime* "Hello my baby, hello my darling, hello my rabid dog!"
JD: It's funny to think about the super hero genre in the context of Carrie, because there are lots of teenagers with powers in comics, and it always goes right. But, I think Carrie is the correct interpretation: it would all go wrong immediately. Is there any great power that could actually come with responsibility in high school?
PH: Is there a superhero that can make everyone go to sleep? Like Mr. Sandman, or something? I can imagine teenage Mr. Sandman just making people sleep all the time, and though it's mildly disruptive, everyone wakes up alert and ready to take on a day of good decisions and healthy eating!
Oh, I see Marvel has a hero named "Sandman," and his power is . . . the ability to turn into sand. That also seems pretty safe for high school, depending on the size and quantity of ants in the region.
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