Todd Haynes’ new film Carol, based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, is a heartfelt and gorgeous love story set in the 1950s about the romance between an unsure young department store clerk named Therese (Rooney Mara) and the ultra-sophisticated, well-dressed socialite Carol (Cate Blanchett). The film is gorgeous to look at, jam packed as it is with startlingly authentic ’50s production design, impeccable hairdos, and dresses you didn’t know you were in love with. Critics have been favorably comparing Carol to Haynes’ own 2005 Far from Heaven, another film that takes many of its visual cues from the bold Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk.
Check Out: The B-Movies Podcast Reviews Carol
Haynes, a gentle and insightful dude, recently discussed Carol with Crave over the telephone (and not a princess phone, it turns out, darn it), happy to talk about the Sirkian influence, the novel on which it’s based, and the groundbreaking nature of lesbian drama.
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CraveOnline: Having seen your movies, I picture you’re talking to me on a vintage princess phone in a really posh hotel room lined with taffeta.
Todd Haynes: I wish! [laugh]
Tell me about the first time you saw a Douglas Sirk movie.
The first time I saw Douglas Sirk was in college. I didn’t encounter him on the late, late, late show like a lot of people; people a little older than me, maybe. But I saw him already as someone to take special note of in an academic context in college. I was immediately in a state of visual splendor. And sort of wonderment I think. But also, there’s something uncomfortable about his films. I felt all those feelings at the same time. They’re strange films, and they’re powerful films, and they’re full of really strong moments. But they leave you with a lot of questions about the world.
Far from Heaven is now being included on double bills with All That Heaven Allows. They’re being equated now.
That’s amazing. That’s nuts.
“I wouldn’t call it a stylish film. I think it’s a film that looks sort of dirty. They’re wearing clothes from the period, but the colors are of a strange palette that is not completely pleasing.”
What brought you to Carol? Were you familiar with the Patricia Highsmith novel on which it’s based?
Yeah, it’s based on her second novel The Price of Salt, a book I did not know, and a script I did not write. But I really responded to that book and that script. I felt that [screenwriter] Phyllis [Nagy] did a beautiful job with the script. Cate was already attached to play Carol. So, when I first read the material, I was already seeing Cate in the lead, in that role. So it was a very, very hard thing to pass up. Cate was attached, which was just one more amazing reason to do it, of course. I loved working with her before.
Carol is your most stylized movie to date. Where did you take your visual cues from?
I was really looking at the… I wouldn’t call it a stylish film. I think it’s a film that looks sort of dirty. They’re wearing clothes from the period, but the colors are of a strange palette that is not completely pleasing. There’s a soiled element to the color palette of the film, which we were seeing in the historical material of the time.
Carol is very well turned-out as a character, but the kind of sad apartment Therese lives in – these sort of sagging blocks of New York City that Therese lives around – and the sort of Stalinist feeling of that department store, which is not a happy place. This is not how Therese wants to spend her life. Carol becomes a way out of this life for Therese.
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Tell me more about Therese. We don’t see her character type – the spunky young person who finds romance as an escape – in too many modern movies anymore.
I think she’s someone who is so completely figuring herself out in the process of the story, and also somebody who really changes in these fairly compressed five months that the film occupies. She’s a strange character because, I think, she doesn’t know what she wants. She doesn’t really know who she is. And we’re sort of watching those things being figured out right in front of our eyes.
Call me out if this is out of line, but I pictured a version of Carol made in, say, the 1940s, where Therese was the same, but Carol was now an older man.
Well, yeah, maybe even well beyond the ’40s. But this was a very, very groundbreaking piece of lesbian fiction that remained published under a pseudonym for most of its life, but that didn’t keep it from becoming a classic of lesbian fiction. But it’s so well-observed in the way it describes love. And how we all fall in love. It happens that it’s these two women, and the kind of love they’re experiencing really doesn’t have a language, doesn’t really have a point of reference.
What was the first record you bought with your own money?
My God. My own money. I wonder what it was! In those days it was probably singles. 45s. You could buy a few. I do remember – I don’t think this was with my own money, but I do recall I wanted this – I wanted the soundtrack to Romeo & Juliet. Because I was obsessed with that movie as a kid. And then I saw that there was even a multi-volume edition with the entire soundtrack of the movie on four records. And that was my beloved combined Christmas/birthday present, probably when I turned 8.
Do you still have it?
I don’t know where that is. I wish.
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Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
