Thanks
to AfterEllen and Autostraddle, “Carol” got on my radar when it was being
publicized, but not yet released. I was
intrigued, and I love Cate Blanchett, and so I found “The Price of Salt” and
read it. When I finished I remember saying
to my cielo (spoiler alert!), “Wow, that was beautiful, and I never expected it
to have a happy ending! Who knew that was possible in 1952!” Film stills starting appearing, and something
felt so familiar…
And
then…this trailer was released, and I just…oh my god. If all I ever had was this trailer, it would
have been enough.
“Dearest.” Oh god, please catch me while I fall
down.
I
knew I had to see this. The trailer made
clear to me they were taking care with the material (at some point I had read
the book again), taking care with the story, that the two women were clearly
lovers as they were in the book (unlike “Fried Green Tomatoes” where that bit
is erased), and my god, so beautiful, and my god, the gazes (she looks, and she
looks back, can it be?), and my god, they get to kiss, and my god, Cate’s
voice. Belly. Fluttering.
I
said to my awesome therapist (with whom it’s probably not coincidental in the
universe’s timing of things I’ve been working on healing that 12-year-old
girl), and my cielo, and anyone else who would listen: I am seeing this movie, I think this is the
movie my 12-year-old self needed. I
checked and checked our local theaters until finally, it got here (yeah, let’s keep talking about which films get lifted up, celebrated,
distributed…).
The
first time we saw it, I forgot to breathe. For the whole film. When Carol
pulled open the belt of her robe I thought I would faint. I could not believe what I was seeing. We left the theater and I danced, like, for
real danced down the street, so happy.
And like I said, I’ve seen it 6 more times (so far) since. I am like unto obsessed, reading reviews
(here’s a fave) and reading/watching interviews with the cast, director,
screenwriter, and score composer (just search in YouTube, there are many), trying
to understand how this exquisite piece of art came into being, and why it has
impacted me so.
Obviously
part of it is of course seeing two women falling in love, as lovers. That one
of them is Cate Blanchett…well.
DYING.
But it’s not just that. How do I begin to describe?
I
mean, read Part 1 if you haven't and let’s just start here:
Phyllis
Nagy, the screenwriter, said in an interview that when she imagined who would
play the role of Carol as she was writing the screenplay, she said she thought
of…
…wait
for it…
…GRACE
KELLY IN “REAR WINDOW.”
Which
is exactly what I said to my cielo after we saw it the first time: that
somebody had been watching their Hitchcock, and it was surely “Rear Window”
because of the costuming and framing choices for Carol in particular, and
perhaps “Vertigo” because of all the longing looks from cars and distance, and
no wonder I danced down the street. The
aesthetic was more than reminiscent of Hitchcock’s film. They had taken care with the 1952-53 setting
(they talk about this a lot in interviews) which would have been when “Rear
Window” was filming (at least some, it was released in 1954), and it shows.
(Also, hello, blond woman’s lover with a camera…).
So
yes, my adolescent, Grace-Kelly-loving, queer self was/is over the moon. I could look up at the screen, and put myself-as-myself
into Therese’s role, and gaze at Carol (like I gazed at Grace Kelly) all the
live-long day (just like Therese does), and watch Carol gaze back. Swoon.
That’s a kind of representation.
There’s
this kind of representation too: almost
everything between Carol and Therese is so much subtext. Because of the time so little could be
spoken, said outright. So much is
expressed between Carol and Therese in glances, a hand on a shoulder, not
words, because first of all Therese doesn’t even have the words, and second, to
be direct is to risk disaster if you’re wrong (Carol decides to, anyway, at
least a little, which is stunning, as in the Glove Lunch scene).
Cate
and Rooney play it SO well, the chemistry is SO right. Everything is in the
eyes, watching for every clue, every hint, trying to decipher if she means what I think she means and will
she know that I know and understand what I am meaning?
This
is exactly right. I’ve read a few
reviews/comments where people want there to be more directness, they think
Carol and Therese are cold because they aren’t flinging around grand romantic
pronouncements. But they couldn’t. They couldn’t.
I
came out in 1992. One of the first
people I came out to told me to never come near her children again. I wasn’t out at my work places for a long
time. I could have lost my jobs (I did lose one, in a way). So I have felt some of that risk.
And this: When my cielo and I fell in love, in 1994, it was just like that, weeks and weeks of subtext and glances and hints and wondering (on my part, she had her own wondering), "How in the world do I say what I feel and let her know it's ok what she feels if that's actually what she feels without ruining the whole thing because what if I'm wrong because that could be an immense disaster?" To get it wrong in the heterosexual world means some embarrassment; to get it wrong in 1952 (or 1994, or today) could mean -- well, look what the heteropatriarchy tries to get Carol to do just to be able to see her daughter.
So
this honoring of that experience in “Carol” feels so true to me. And it’s done so well. The ache and the longing and the loneliness of
all that just crack me open and feel so right to my experience.
That’s
a kind of representation.
And
also: the care with which the story is
told.
The
interviews affirmed what I knew: that so
much care had gone into making this film.
In the cinematography, the costuming, the use of light, the use of
reflection, the music, the details from the book that made it into little things
like “Easy Living,” and “flung out of space,” and Carol constantly combing her
hair back with her fingers. Immense care
was taken with this story, to honor the novel and to honor the lives and love
of these two women. I’m moved by that,
deeply.
Honestly,
we don’t get that often with lesbian/queer cinema. Not all of it, all at once. Not often. Maybe
never like this.
This
film, it’s like an essential oil of the book.
It’s like they took the material and distilled it down, and down again,
into its essence. Much less dialogue, much communicated by expressions rather
than words, much communicated through cinematography and music – and it is all
there. An example: there are phone calls and long letters from
Carol to Therese in the book after their separation, and in the film we have
the one, exquisite letter, brief, leaving us wanting (leaving Therese wanting,
I am certain) – and all those letters and calls are distilled into that one
letter, and all the meaning is there.
It’s astounding to me. Brilliant
writing and acting and filming and music.
That
kind of care and honoring of this story, that’s a kind of representation.
And
there’s this, too: this movie didn’t
become all about the men and their feelings.
 |
| Thanks to AfterEllen for the awesome Oscar-protest memes. |
Check out this research: Men get so many
words. Even in women-centered movies,
men very often get more dialogue, more actual words. Patriarchy has a hard time letting a story center
on something other than (cis, white) men.
“Carol” not only avoids this (72% women’s words, for the record), it
makes clear that this story is not about the men at all. They aren’t ogres, but they’re irrelevant to
the women’s happiness, which befuddles them – but the story spends no time in
their feelings. This story is about the
women, queer women at that, centering them in a way that is so rare in cinema,
and which I am certain is the reason why it got shut out at the Oscars and absurdly
didn’t even rate a best picture nomination (I’m not the only one who thinks this).
So
that centering is a kind of representation.
The
last thing (there’s not really a last thing when it comes to me and this movie,
but whatever) is about resolution.
The
film teaches us how to read it, through the music, and through Carol’s letter. The score is full of unresolved chords and
aching suspensions, swirls and eddies of movement. When the music “resolves” it is often into a
minor chord, including at the end of the Waterloo love scene. Other times we
get momentary resolution in major chords, when the oboe and clarinet swell
together – but only moments, and we can feel the joy in those moments (the
composer tells us that the clarinet and oboe are meant to evoke each of the
women – the clarinet Therese, oboe Carol.) The meter is constantly shifting –
are we in 4/4 time? ¾? What time are we in, anyway? Double beats over and under triple beats…
(I
think this is what makes the pop music so disconcerting, all those peppy
straightforward major chords, and also perfect for the start of the road trip,
that peppy, major-key joy – and sleighbells!
The jazzy wandering of Billie Holiday’s “Easy Living” is a little
different, especially because we hear it spare at first, with the tension of
Carol and Therese’s back-and-forth around the piano. The solo clarinet echoes the solo clarinet,
i.e. Therese, of the score).
…it’s
all stunningly disorienting and aching and beautiful. And of course, there’s the ending, with the
rising pulse and rising volume and the close-up of Carol’s brilliant smile and
the whole theater stops breathing and then -- SILENCE and black screen and
there is NO resolution musically to that ending! What are we to make of that? (Here's a brilliant take on it, by the way.)
“You
seek resolutions and explanations because you are young,” Carol writes to
Therese. The letter clarifies what the music
has been telling us: there is no easy
resolution for the situation Carol and Therese find themselves in. Carol is telling her: this, her life, is a
mess. Life is messy. This is what you
come to realize as an adult. There is no
“happily ever after” exactly – no running off into the Iowa sunset and...then
what? What actually happens next?
Especially
if you’re queer, there is a lot of negotiating to be done. Negotiating how to live with some freedom
within systemic oppression. Negotiating all the varying shades of being out (or
not). Add in another person, add in a child, and a divorce, and well, it’s
messy. For Carol, she’s negotiating how
to be somewhat free, yet still with the pain of being separated from her
daughter. Therese has to decide, are you
ready for that, or not? She has to
decide what she wants.
We
see Therese’s transformation over the course of the film and so her return to
Carol at the end feels true. It feels
joyous (a perpetual sunrise). And it
still feels unresolved, that swelling unresolved chord, because what happens
now? Nagy says the ending is hopeful
because it is full of possibility. It
doesn’t offer “resolutions and explanations” because life is not like that. Especially if you are queer.
And
that, too, is a kind of representation.
* * * * * * *
All
of these words and it still feels insufficient to describe what the film has
meant to me. It’s healed me, honestly,
has unleashed some creativity that has been long dormant (as in this set of
posts, and as in, here’s a fanfic I wrote about “what happens next” because I
couldn’t stop imagining it. I’ve never written a fic…except in my head), and in
doing so has helped me to feel more free with myself, my voice – I think
because that 12-year-old me is finally happy.
This
film is more than I ever expected. I’m
so thankful for it.
And…I
think it’s important to recognize that this film is incredibly white.
Please
read Part 3, it’s important.
