Just this year, the United States finally came to accept marriage equality from a legal standpoint. It was a moment of great jubilation not only among the LGBT community, but among those who supported them on the simple premise that love is sacred and should be allowed in equal measure for everyone regardless of their preference. Of course nothing is perfect, but few would claim that the American people have not come a long way.

Now imagine how tough it was for people decades ago who could never aspire to see their love perceived as even a natural human response. Just witness the conversation that Therese (Rooney Mara) has with "boyfriend" Richard (Jack Lacy) about homosexual attraction in Todd Hayne's new masterwork "Carol." He responds that he's never met a person like that, and hints, without ever being explicit, disgust over such a question. Why should he have any associations with people in that condition?

Yet that is the power of a film like "Carol," a film that in its context shows the viewer how much we've come and yet how strong people could be in the face of adversity. And yet at the same time, the film does not really harp on themes of homosexuality as one might expect. In fact, the film's greatest narrative technique is how understated everything seems to be.

Set in New York in the 1950s, "Carol" explores the love affair between Carol (Cate Blanchett) and Therese in the face of tremendous adversity for both characters. A romance such as this one could easily have moved into the realm of overemphatic melodrama, but Haynes is too potent a dramatist to fall into those traps of overwhelming audiences in big beats. Instead he opts to save his emotional outbursts, thus allowing the characters to sustain their inner battles play out to great suspense for the audience. Thus he builds the film to its glorious finale.

The best way to describe the film's emotional structure might come from the central love theme, itself building in a number of ways. We hear Carter Burwell's strings playing an ostinato passage in the vein of Phillip Glass with occasional shifts in meter to throw the pattern off balance momentarily. Yet it slowly finds its way and the composer layers the foundation with a magical harp and eventually a lone wind instrument playing the melody. The first few times we hear the theme it means little to us, serving just as a backdrop to the world of the story. And yet as the relationship between Carol and Therese unfolds it attaches itself to them, and by the end of the film becomes an integral expression of their eternal love. Burwell's choice to use a wind in the melody while keeping the strings as accompaniment emphasizes the film's subtle nature, as a more traditional score would like have had the string instrument's more direct expressivity coming to fore.

In the same way the audience slowly finds itself piecing together the relationship which actually starts off, unbenowst initially to viewers, at its ending point before flashing back and bringing the two lovers back together to the point of arrival.

Therese and Carol could not be more different. Carol is decisive and a great risktaker. Therese is not her first lover, a fact that all the characters in her life make plain and clear. Therese meanwhile, as she notes, has no idea how to say "No." When she does, it turns out to be her most misguided decision in the film. Carol comes from wealth; Therese lives in a small apartment and works in a department store. Carol answers to no one while Therese is malleable.

Yet it is interesting to see how these two characters intersect and eventually switch roles, with Therese growing stronger and independent while her lover loses herself in the cruel decision of choosing between two different loves - her daughter or Therese.

Blanchett delivers a knockout performance that will undoubtedly be the talk of awards season. She is cool and collected, her ice giving off a penetrating glance. Compare that with Mara's more wide eyed Therese who often looks lost somewhere. Whereas we can almost instantly read Carol's thoughts in Blanchett's eyes, Mara's offer a greater deal of mystery. Even in the most painful of moments, we remain wondering what emotional world she is inhabiting. It is the kind of performance, that lenses beautifully by Edward Lachman, keeps the viewer in constant search and wonder. Eventually she does let us into her world and that proves to be Therese's most decisive moment in the movie.

One final and crucial note on Blanchett's performance: Wait for her in a major confrontation scene later in the film, where she breaks the viewer's heart with one poignant line of dialogue that not only comments on the current conflict, but also makes a statement for millions of people that have often been marginalized for years (and sadly continue to be in some places).

Kyle Chandler is ferocious as Carol's husband Harge, yet he too convinces the audience that his frustration comes from a misunderstanding of his love for his wife. Sarah Paulson gives a grounded portrayal of Carol's former lover Abby, a woman that brings some degree of balance to proceedings and makes the audience feel safe in this tumultuous world.

Lachman and Haynes have a propensity for framing their main heroines behind glass, expressing not only the prison that the outside world is confining their emotions to, but their own hiding of their emotions from the world. When shot in closeup behind glass doors or window the two women are also often marginalized in the frame. In more public settings, they are also shown as outsiders; at one party Therese is framed by a window, the rest of the cohorts shown within the walls of the apartment, expressing that these characters do not exist in the same worlds.

Some might claim that "Carol's" poignancy and power comes from its social context and jubilation of recent events. Yet does all art not rely on its social context for its power on some level? However "Carol" is strengthened by its attachment to another time. A time when the dream of that equality was nowhere to be found and survived instead on the strength of the people willing to commit to it. That is the beauty of "Carol." Love always wins.