MovieChat Forums > Safe (1995) Discussion > Carol is not really a person in the worl...

Carol is not really a person in the world

posted 19 years ago by edorapietrafesa
7 replies | jump to latest

She is a non person. She has no purpose in the world at all. Her days are working out in a sterile gym with other rich nothing women, going to the salon, and living in a sterile mansion with a maid who does everything. She never gets dirty or cooks or gardens or does anything. No wonder she looks like death. She's never living. It's a combination of having no sense of who the hell she is, what she can do, etcc.....that is the real source of her problem. I don't know if she's a true schizo,psycho,whatever...as much as she's her husband's (let's be frank here) f#ck me doll (and he does treat her like a pretty pixie stick), a stepmom to a kid who could take her or leave her, has no job, no skills, no reason to be existing in the world. And this slowly eats away at an actually intelligent feeling woman who has accepted the life she was BRED for. To be a pretty good society wife. Carol is not as shallow as these other women. I love when she's with her "best friend" and they try a fruit diet! Wow! How daunting! Or when she's visiting her friend at her house and the kitchen is like so sterile and perfect with black and white tile and all the sugar containers lined up just so...they have no freaking real live. I think what could save Carol is joining the Peace Corps. She's able to make lasagna with that dorky guy who wants to jump her bones (who saw that? If she had invited him into her igloo-hahaha-he would have gone) and dance a little. She can do things. She is capable. But her world with her husband who's kind of a macho ass is killing her too. Not just the environment but her environment of being a nothing worthless rich housewife with no contribution to the world whatsoever.

[–] flowers_on_the_razorwire 19 years ago

I finally got to see the movie last night and I pretty much agree with what you say. Awesome performance by Julianne Moore.

[–] Lee_Holloway 19 years ago

nice 'analysis'........

have you considered the idea that that might be the point of the entire film? :)

'I'm in my tree, I'm talking to the Dixie Chicks and they're making me feel better.'

[–] uutuus 19 years ago

Good points, Edorapietrafesa!
Without mercy the film shows how the everyday chores (or joys - as some persistantly claim)- the things that are oh so female - hollow out Carol.

Still, I didn't understand how to understand the retreat- place and -people, and I like it that way. The ambiguity I think of here is how the retreat is captured, with silly chanting and self-centredness. But it is also here that Carol finds peace and learns to "see" herself. This sort of ambiguity pervades the whole film: How are we to understand her illness, the family, her getting worse (or is it better)?
It is nice that difficult matters for once ARE described on film as difficult.

[–] Brude_Stone 19 years ago

I suppose she finds peace, but the peace she finds is to shut herself away in a completely sterile igloo for the rest of her 'life.' As the first post describes at length, this isn't a life. It's the lack of a life. It's a tragic kind of peace that she finds, and I wonder if she really finds peace or is it just perfect numbness?

[–] alvoalvo 19 years ago

I've seen Safe about 3 or 4 times now. At first, I really thought that Carol White was truly allergic to her chemically-drenched environment---but I can see your point that the nature of her "illness" may indeed be either psychological or perhaps even social.

But the question is which is more toxic to Carol: modern-day chemicals or her somewhat worthless modern-day lifestyle?

[–] SheBear 18 years ago

Yes, she is a non person. The problem is that we never saw her before she became this way. If we had I suspect her character would seem more sympathetic.

[–] edorapietrafesa 17 years ago

i think she has become this way throughout her life IMO. she was a good kid from a normal home, well bred, not neccessarily wealthy. she was a cheerleader/homecoming queen? a good student. went to college. got a job. met her husband. got married. was a wife and mother. so i don't know if we can assume she had been a go go dancer or anything. the culmination of her life of doing what's she's supposed to, being friends with the "right" sort, doing what society tells a nice educated upstanding woman "should" do is killing her soul. her soul is rotting away inside her making her sick. like the doctor in the movie tells her, "carol, you are NOT sick. there is NOTHING physically wrong with you". now this is a physician. she has no hidden ailments he just can't find. it IS psychological. she is a nothing. a void. and it's killing her. the VOID is killing her slowly. it started when she was a child?/teenager?/adult? and is continuing. at the retreat center, the important thing isn't that she's away from toxins or pollution. as soon as she gets there you can clearly see the roadway is inches from their retreat place and she is smack dab near pollution. this retreat is for her to come to an understanding of who she IS. she'll only get better not because she's in a healthy place now, but because she'll figure out what CAROL wants out of life and probably will have to divorce her husband and move away and completely be reborn and start a new life since she's been dead inside for so long. that is what's killing her. her joke of a life with her family.