Car­ol

Car­ol is a love sto­ry. Like all great love sto­ries, its pow­er comes from the uni­ver­sal emo­tion soar­ing beneath its spe­cif­ic con­cerns. The film owes a debt to the immac­u­late prose of Patri­cia Highsmith’s 1952 source nov­el – not to men­tion her social dar­ing in writ­ing a sophis­ti­cat­ed and beau­ti­ful nov­el of love between two women at a time when that love was defined legal­ly and moral­ly as ​‘obscene’. Haynes’ adap­ta­tion is up there with Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin as an exam­ple of how to retain the soul of a book while trans­form­ing it for max­i­mum cin­e­mat­ic effect.

To be believed, love sto­ries need to cap­ture the steps in between meet­ing an attrac­tive stranger and falling in love with them. Love is mag­ic. No one can define it so the spell that con­jures it needs to make sense.

In Haynes’ pre­vi­ous films, love has some­times spelled bad news. In Super­star: The Karen Car­pen­ter Sto­ry, smoth­er­ing parental love is a fac­tor in the devel­op­ment of the singer’s fatal anorex­ia. In Safe, Julianne Moore retreats not just from love, but from the whole tox­ic world. Far from Heav­en shares a 1950s Amer­i­can set­ting and a melo­dra­mat­ic gay love sto­ry with Car­ol and yet there is some­thing more melan­cholic at work – a result of Moore’s fear­ful approach to the fact that she is in love with a black man. The forces of intol­er­ant soci­ety are more oppres­sive­ly felt and Haynes plays his hand a lit­tle arch­ly at time. Car­ol is always as earnest as a kiss.

The sto­ry­telling is as clear as a pol­ished win­dow­pane. Every­thing serves the point that love is the still heart of a chaot­ic world: the frost­ed puri­ty of the colours, the state­ly pac­ing, the yearn­ing score by Carter Bur­well, the way that Ed Lachman’s cam­era always drinks in a space before dia­logue kicks in which in turn cre­ates a grace­ful rhythm. Haynes con­ducts all ele­ments as indi­vid­ual instru­ments that come togeth­er in one har­mo­nious chord which means the most pri­mal and won­drous of feelings.

The core of Car­ol is estab­lished in a fusion of time­lines that, with­in the first few min­utes, shows the end, the begin­ning and key images that recur: Therese (Rooney Mara) watch­ing through a win­dow; a glimpse of Car­ol (Cate Blanchett); a toy train on its tracks. The train is what brings the pair togeth­er for the first time. It’s the item that Car­ol pur­chas­es while Christ­mas shop­ping in the depart­ment store where Therese works. Their mutu­al attrac­tion is shown as some­thing more last­ing than lust from the out­set, although inti­ma­cy is not some­thing that can take place with­out a pre­cise series of steps.

Read more in LWLies 62: the Car­ol issue

The dia­logue is as care­ful­ly cal­i­brat­ed as all else in this film. Every­one is exact but not too elo­quent. They hit their mark when it’s their turn to speak, say­ing no more or no less than what will move things along. Flir­ta­tion is a ques­tion of read­ing between the lines. Haynes’ taste for ren­der­ing sur­faces that are preg­nant with under­ly­ing ten­sion is the ide­al way to infer that the homo­pho­bic social con­text is dri­ving them to a dance of del­i­cate wording.

“I have a friend who told me I should be more inter­est­ed in humans,” says Therese, sit­ting straight-backed by the piano in Carol’s fam­i­ly home.

“How’s that going?” says Car­ol, from a distance.

“It’s going well, actually.”

The women exchange a look that can­not be mis­tak­en. They are often exchang­ing looks. They can­not stop steal­ing glances only to find that the oth­er is steal­ing one too, mean­ing that they are both giv­ing as well as tak­ing. Lachman’s cam­era catch­es one pair of eyes look­ing, its sub­ject look­ing right back and the mean­ing that sparks as the women con­nect. They are a pair match­ing each oth­er step-for-step down a social back-road of queer inti­ma­cy, act­ing the con­ven­tion­al parts while in pub­lic and for a long time while in pri­vate, too.

The stakes for Car­ol are high. She is a woman of the world with a young child and a hus­band who won’t be divorced eas­i­ly. Kyle Chan­dler as Harge is a des­per­ate man rather than a cru­el one, wont to charge back into the famil­ial home where he no longer lives. If the film has an antag­o­nist it is Harge with his bray­ing, undig­ni­fied, venge­ful death throes. But Haynes – even more than High­smith before him – takes pains to enable his suf­fer­ing to find full voice. He sym­pa­this­es with Harge so that none of his char­ac­ters have to. The same is true of Richard (Jake Lacy), Therese’s jovial and hand­some boyfriend who is intro­duced when the film begins. We see jilt­ed and con­fused men with no com­pre­hen­sion of the nature of the love that is spir­it­ing their women away.

Therese is com­par­a­tive­ly free of bag­gage. She is box fresh at 19 years old. Why does she stick around? The clue’s in the title. And yet this sto­ry is reward­ing because it engages with poten­tial­ly deal-break­ing facts rather than just let­ting char­ac­ters smooth­ly surf the waves of a nar­ra­tive­ly-con­coct­ed des­tiny. Car­ol is about lovers meet­ing at dif­fer­ent times in their lives with dif­fer­ent lev­els of expe­ri­ence. They can’t mean the same thing to one anoth­er. This could doom them or it could mean they live in com­ple­men­tary har­mo­ny forever.

It’s impor­tant that their end­ing is not inevitable. Love con­tains no promise of any­thing oth­er than one self-con­tained moment at a time. Haynes under­stands this and presents a series of crys­talline vignettes that pave the path that Therese and Car­ol take togeth­er. Or to be more lit­er­al: Car­ol dri­ves her will­ing pas­sen­ger Therese around in a car. Her posi­tion at the con­trols is telling but while she has the nav­i­ga­tion skills to steer, Therese has the heart to will them onwards.

Rooney Mara’s voice is scratchy like a dust-coat­ed long­play­er. She sum­mons raw words that keep Car­ol lis­ten­ing. She plays a young woman with an intense soul. A red and yel­low beret on top of her seri­ous face shows the youth­ful spir­it that leaks out despite her focus on adult affairs. She is inter­est­ed in pho­tog­ra­phy (mod­i­fied from the­atre design in the book) and this trans­lates to a watch­ful presence.

Mara’s genius is in con­vey­ing so much feel­ing in a char­ac­ter that doesn’t have much dra­ma apart from that which boils with­in. She tries to keep her face com­posed and sto­ic so when Car­ol moves her to smile and her dim­ples come out, it is a charm­ing sur­ren­der. Mara is estab­lished as a com­mit­ted per­former. This has been true since she gave her­self over to David Fincher’s The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too. Here, the lay­ers of her per­for­mance are excep­tion­al. Every fibre of her being seems to be engaged in the sti­fling of feel­ing, yet she has giv­en Therese such inner life that there is elec­tric­i­ty ema­nat­ing from her mere pres­ence. Her Therese is hun­gry for authen­tic expe­ri­ence more than she is young and vulnerable.

Car­ol is old­er but more vul­ner­a­ble for it. Her escape from the domes­tic bub­ble where she was safe­ly clos­et­ed makes her a tar­get for the same con­dem­na­tion that plagued queer appetites in Far from Heav­en. Blanchett is an actress who has set stan­dards for her own per­for­mances so high that the rev­e­la­tion is not that she’s great but that she’s great in a new, sophis­ti­cat­ed out­sider way. While Therese’s nails are bit­ten-down and unvar­nished, Carol’s are man­i­cured talons. Sandy Pow­ell has cos­tumed her to be every inch the debonair 1950s socialite. She has the fig­ure, looks, man­ners and wits of a mar­ried woman of her class. It’s her armour, her cam­ou­flage and her charm. She knows who she is. She knows that to give her­self the best chance of sur­vival she must tend to the details that she can con­trol. She is an out­sider styled to be irre­sistibly but con­ven­tion­al­ly attractive.

This is also Haynes’ modus operan­di. It’s fun­ny that a film pegged as ​“a les­bian love sto­ry” nar­ra­tive­ly and tonal­ly is the director’s straight­est film to date. There are no dolls, no spank­ings, no women play­ing men, no gold trousers. There aren’t even gay bars, just two women walk­ing towards one anoth­er until they can’t get any closer.

Car­ol is a love sto­ry. It presents love as a white-hot cocoon that attains mean­ing from its con­trast with a stormy out­side. Love can­not save you from walk­ing in the open in the cli­mate of your time. Love is noth­ing to do with this. Love is a pro­found per­son­al lan­guage that can make sense of a world that can­not make sense of it.