I’ve Seen that Movie Too

Carol feels like an old film. It is set in the America of the late fifties, but that is not what makes it anachronistic, but rather it’s belief that the audiences watching it are stuck in that time period. We're not. Not to say that its a bad film. Carol has a lot going for it, in particular the very detailed and beautiful photography and amazing production and costume design, enhanced by the two gorgeous actresses that play the title roles, Cate Blanchet, as Carol, and Rooney Mara, as Therese, now both candidates for an Academy Award for their performances.

   

Rooney Mara as Therese

The trouble with the movie is that it suffers from what I will call the Brokeback Mountain syndrome, which is that while supposedly addressing the issue of homosexuality through a love affair in a place (Brokeback) or time period (Carol) in which the discrimination against those relationships was extreme, in order to call out that discrimination, it does so almost apologetically, directed at a straight audience, as if it were trying to “sell” the love affair to straight folk. In the process of doing this it sacrifices reality.

Cate Blanchet as Carol

This approach starts with the fact that both films use straight actors to play people of a different sexual orientation. The audience knows this because we live in a world of instant information, so it somehow already detracts from the subversive intent of a film that is trying to show the fluidity of sexuality. Wouldn’t the beautiful Jodie Foster or Portia De Rossi been a better casting choice in Ms. Blanchet’s role? And Rooney Mara could easily have been played by Ellen Paige or even Kristen Stewart, who showed much more realism with a gay role in Clouds of Sils Maria (also about the relationship between an older woman and a young gay woman). They most likely would have brought more realism to the roles but, more than that, isn’t the point to offer these roles to actors that are probably looking to expand the landscape?

This is really an oddity, considering that Carol director, Todd Haynes, is identified with the New Queer Cinema movement. Haynes has addressed sexual identity and societal norms in other of his films, like Far From Heaven, Poison and Safe.

But since gay actors can and do play straight characters, why not have straight actors play gay people, even though, in this case, the gay relationship is at the center of the plot? So, let’s leave that aside. The next faux pas of the movie is the relationship of the main protagonists itself. Does anyone really believe in love at first sight? Is that romantic at all in the twenty-first century? Or are we to assume that this is what happened among gay women in that time period? Watching Carol you can’t help but think: who behaves like that? What adults seriously fall in love at first sight and with literally no context beyond their good looks, they turn their lives inside out. Even if we accept that the sexual magnetism was strong, the movie never really develops anything else. There is never any complexity in the relationship between Carol and Therese. That may have passed muster in those Hollywood films of old that no one (not even back then) really believed, but in the twenty-first century of Supreme Court rulings and a stronger movement towards gender equity, it is hard to swallow.

And while both Ms. Blanchet and Ms. Mara, who have more than proven their value as superb actresses, are good in their roles, there is really nothing that extraordinary about their acting. That is, nothing like how we’ve seen them act before, for example Ms. Blanchet in Elizabeth I or Ms. Mara in Girl With a Dragoon Tattoo. Unless, again as was the case with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback, the award is for acting like a homosexual person in a love relationship.

Finally there is the very contrived plot in this screen adaptation. Carol, played by Ms. Blanchet, is about to lose custody of the child she supposedly loves profoundly, yet when the drunken husband takes away her daughter and threatens to file for full custody, does she follow in another car to make sure her child is all right? Does she call him back to negotiate and get him to come to his senses? Does she even try to see her daughter? No, she picks up her suitcase then gets Therese, the much younger woman she has fallen in love-at-first-sight with, played by Ms. Mara, and goes on a road trip! She’s seen this woman all of two times, one for less than five minutes. So, this is love?

Despite the mink coats and money Carol obviously possesses, the road trip they take is to the worst little towns and motels possible in the Midwest, and in winter! And yet still they somehow manage to get caught on tape in the process. In the end (spoiler alert), Carol cedes custody of the child she loves in exchange for the young woman she barely knows but apparently loves more. Is this really a happy ending?

Could it be that even though the director is gay, he is a man and so this all appears plausible to him? What did the author of the book intend as the happy ending? The book on which Carol is based, “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith (author of other novels taken to the big screen, like Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, or Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley), may answer some of the questions raised. Ms. Highsmith is rather legendary for having been a person who did not like people much and who, despite being gay herself, discriminated against black people and was outspokenly anti-Semitic. She did not have long term relationships or children, and was described as rather cruel and harsh. An anecdote, it seems she lived with cats and about three hundred snails in her garden in England and once took hundreds of snails in a handbag to a cocktail party saying they were her "companions for the evening".

Most of the audience will know little of this and will remember only Mr. Haynes adaptation, which is, again, captivating in its visual beauty, with its old Hollywood-style actresses in a romance –a gay romance- story with a happy ending. All very straight and acceptable, but not very real.