I Was a Teenage Telekinetic

REMEMBER THE resident Loner of your old high school, the one with the seemingly blank gaze and clipped tongue? You know, that Ugly Duckling who you didn't want on your team, at your party or by your side. Mention the Duckling's name, and you could see that familiar smirk form on your friend's face, the required prelude to a "They're so weird" pronouncement. The judgment thus rendered, the outcast would just as quickly fade out of your reality, but upon occasion you might find yourself wondering what exactly lay beneath that inscrutable mask, what made the misfit not fit?

A fire-and-brimstone freak posing as mother in the case of one Carrie White. This specimen of faith-gone-fanatic seems straight out of Jonathan Edwards's congregation, dividing her time between spreading the Good Word among the suburban heathen and tormenting her daughter at the slightest hint of sin rearing its ugly head within Carrie. Mrs. White (played by Piper Laurie) has plainly left her mark on Carrie (played by Sissy Spacek); naive almost beyond belief, Carrie is utterly traumatized by the experience of her first period in the gym shower (as a high school senior, no less) in the opening scene. She cannot find relief from the mockery of her more sophisticated peers at home; a healthy dose of Scripture and a spell of confinement in a cell-like closet is the evangelist-mother's prescription.

Brian DePalma presents us with a character who, from all initial appearances, will require several encounters with a hanky during the course of the film, were it not for a certain twist. "I want to be normal," Carrie cries out to an unfeeling Mrs. White, but it's just not in the cards. An acute shyness alone does not separate Carrie from her classmates; evoking the image of another teenage girl of recent vintage who is "somehow different," Carrie is endowed with a power not commonly found among us mortals--the power of telekinesis. Ashtrays somersault, mirrors vibrate and shatter--and the camera's close-ups on Carrie erase all doubts as to the source of these phenomena.

THE BULK OF the film dwells on Carrie's rebellion against the domineering rule of her mother--in which case her supernatural powers serve her well--and the subsequent blossoming of the film's heroine. The stimulus behind the transformation appears in the form of an invitation to the senior prom from the Big Man on Campus (William Katt), a touching gesture of compassion that is suggested to him by his steady. To Carrie, the prom represents more than a good time or a night to be remembered fondly; it is an act of liberation, a time when she learns to dance, to make herself beautiful, to sample the human side of life.

Cinderella's charmed evening is fated to end in disgrace, however. Her enemies engineer her election as prom queen, only to ruin her moment of triumph by dousing their unsuspecting victim with a vat of blood--an especially cruel reminder of the scene in the showers. DePalma has obviously deemed this moment as the climax of the film; he drags the viewer through an agonizing five-minute sequence shot entirely in slow motion. Discordant violin strains accompany the doomed couple as they ascend to the stage. The glow of Carrie's face pains us all the more as the camera pans to the bucket precariously perched on the rigging directly above her blonde head. The tension-building devices are strictly conventional--reminiscent of the contrived suspense of a made-for-TV movie--yet the impact of the bloodbath sticks with the viewer long after he has left the theater.

The memorable image of a blood-soaked Carrie glaring upon the suddenly soundless ballroom marks the point where DePalma abandons all self-restraint. Gimmick piles upon gimmick as Carrie wreaks her vengeance; screens split, reddish tones suffuse the lens, a single shot multiplies into a revolving wheel of faces both shocked and gleeful. The film now develops into a full-scale assault upon the senses that ultimately gluts the viewer's mind with technique.

Nor do we find complete satisfaction in Lawrence D. Cohen's screenplay. Carrie remains the eternal enigma down to her last act of self-destruction; when asked if she is enjoying herself at the outset of the prom, she answers with a cryptic "It's like being on Mars." The character is never fleshed out, although this may be the conscious intention of the script. In any case, we are left with one-dimensional identity that lingers in the mind--the One with the Power who is never quite accepted.

Carrie travels over all too familiar ground, and this accounts for its major shortcomings. The film lends itself to unflattering comparisons with recent movies of a similar ilk but of more polish and originality. The particular setting may seem a bit novel, but its anarchic resolution seems more appropriate to one of those Night Gallery travesties than to a full-length feature film. Pointless as Carrie may appear, a screening could at least lead to a trip down Memory Lane. Think about that Duckling you never asked to the prom some time; there just might have been a little Carrie buried down there.