‘Carol’: Love in the face of intolerance

The movie "Carol" was supposed to open today at AMC River Park Square. At the last minute, however, the chain dropped it, noting only that maybe it would open "hopefully next week." I had already written a review, which was scheduled for broadcast this morning on Spokane Public Radio.

So, because my review is already out there, here is a transcription: 

Todd Haynes seems obsessed with the past, especially with how emotionally stunted the America of the  1940s and ’50s was.

His 2002 film “Far From Heaven,” which he both wrote and directed, is a cinematic exploration of both racial and sexual-identity issues done in the distinct style of a Douglas Sirk film. Though beautifully filmed, “Far From Heaven” feels like a museum piece, a stylistic anachronism I find only marginally interesting.

Far more successful was Haynes’ 2011 adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel “Mildred Pierce.” That HBO miniseries was truer to the source material – of a woman trying to navigate the threats posed by the Great Depression – certainly than Michael Curtiz’s 1945 movie.

And now comes “Carol,” Haynes’ adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel “The Price of Salt.” Highsmith is better known as the author of such noir studies as “Strangers on a Train” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” But “Salt,” adapted for Haynes’ by screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, is something different: It was Highsmith’s only straightforward study of lesbian love.

So Haynes presents us with Therese (played by Rooney Mara), a young woman still coming to grips with who she is much less who she wants to become. Working at a New York City department store, Therese seems to sleepwalk through her days, intimidated by her supervisor, the customers, even her friends.

And then Carol Aird walks in. As played by Cate Blanchett, Carol is the image of sophistication and class. Something passes between the two – something that is clearly more than just envy on Therese’s part – and when Carol leaves her gloves on the counter, Therese takes advantage of the opening. Pretty soon the two are having lunch, then as Therese learns more about Carol’s complicated life – the estranged husband, the beloved daughter, the jealousy and resentment posed by the husband and his judgmental family – she realizes that she has stumbled into something life-changing. Perhaps even life-defining.

But this is the 1950s, remember, an era in which same-sex love was still considered by mainstream America as a mental illness. And if Therese is still coming of age, it is Carol who is struggling to balance her sexual desires with the demands of a bigoted and intolerant culture. It is Carol who, already having embarked on what then would have been considered a “normal” life of marriage and motherhood, is now having to cope with the impossible dictates of those demands.

Throughout his film, from the opening tracking shot of a Manhattan street scene to lingering shots of Blanchett’s expressively exotic face or Mara’s mooning gaze, Haynes remains the consummate filmmaking artist. And thematically, he refrains from making Carol’s husband – played by Kyle Chandler – into the heavy, portraying him instead as confused, frustrated and pained by emotions he can’t begin to understand in himself or his adored wife.

Maybe best of all, “Carol” ends in a way that is nothing at all like the 1950s. While it may be a stretch to call the film’s ending happy, it opens the way to a suggestion of something better. Which is all any of us can ever expect.