Warning: This article contains spoilers for the film Carol (2015).
Carol unfolds like a memory. The vision of 1950s America mutes and blurs the pastel colors we associate with the period. The green glaze—as if filtered through Tiffany glass—conveys constant longing. The 16mm photography teems with grain like the emotions the characters stifle. Carter Burwell’s score suggests a footrace between the heart and mind, the chest surging ahead. This film is a Yuletide tonic worth savoring every year.
Adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, Carol has the limbs of a feature but the bones of a short story. Therese (Rooney Mara) meets Carol (Cate Blanchett) while working at a Manhattan department store. Carol forgets her gloves. Therese returns them. They convene again and again, slowly acknowledging their developing feelings.
Therese spends her lunch hour studying the store handbook but expresses herself through photography. Carol wears a silver wedding ring, a selection perhaps made by a jeweler based on her cool-toned features. But as with her sexuality, Carol has taken her own path with her appearance, favoring rich yellow gold on her wrists and ears. Carol’s estranged husband Harge (Kyle Chander), first seen Scotch-taping a broken green crayon, spends the runtime trying to mend their union.
Director Todd Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman cast their camera on marginalized settings for Carol and Therese’s then-taboo romance. The opening credits emerge from a sidewalk sewer grate. The Lincoln Tunnel serves as the backdrop for the couple’s first private moment, which slips into abstraction like a closed-eye hallucination. And when Carol whisks Therese away from New York to celebrate Christmas and New Year's Eve, they go to flyover country.
A Voyage to the Heartland
After a pitstop in Philadelphia, Carol’s Packard sets its course for America’s humble waistline, the Midwest. Therese’s eyes catch fields, smokestacks, and endless asphalt as the two undertake this romantic journey without a set destination. Haynes depicts the Midwest Interstate Highway as a passage to heaven.
In Chicago, the pair check into the Drake Hotel. Perched on Lake Shore Drive’s brawny shoulder in the Gold Coast, this institution was established in 1920, and its old English signage still acts as a beacon for southbound travelers today. Past the grand entryway and oak finishings, Carol and Therese reveal to the Cape Cod Room maître d' that they share a single room reservation—a small but significant step in their relationship.
Next is Waterloo, Iowa, where the duo spends New Year’s Eve. "Waterloo" usually refers to Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815, which has a forked significance in the film. It is here that the two finally lower their defenses to share their love physically; it also is here that Harge reveals the extent of his plot to recapture Carol, forcing her to leave Therese to maintain custody of her daughter.
How does Carol so deftly capture the Midwest’s concoction of warmth, wonder, and desolation? For one, the entire production took place in Cincinnati. According to movie-locations.com, the Queen City’s Over-the-Rhine district is the biggest and least-tampered-with 19th-century urban neighborhood in the U.S. So, even if this movie has no true Chicago DNA, its makeup is wholly Middle American.
Hope for the Holidays
Filmgoers will never reach a consensus on what defines a “Christmas movie.” Some only require a picture to take place during Christmastime to qualify, a la Die Hard or Gremlins. I take no issue with this position, but I feel a holiday classic requires a certain spirit to elevate this season of giving.
Same-sex romances like Carol’s and Therese’s did not typically flourish in mid-century America. Federal employees, military members, and many others lost their jobs for loving who they loved. In 1952, the year in which Carol is set and its source material was published, “homosexual activity” was a criminal offense.
In 1954, another couple graced the Drake’s Cape Cod Room: the real-lift and freshly wed Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. After they etched their initials into the bartop, Monroe penned a letter in a bottle for DiMaggio, passed it to the bartender, and never retrieved it. They divorced the next year. Considering the historical context of Carol, we might expect the movie to close on a similarly doomed stanza.
Instead, the final moments find Therese slowly approaching Carol, seemingly ready to accept an invitation to live together in a new apartment. Because of all the work Haynes and company have done to build this world and relationship, this conclusion plays as an act of immense hope and generosity. What a gift.
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