Carol's Colors: My Experience Watching The Lesbian Drama "Carol"
This article is one in a series where I watch films that have been recommended to me by friends. Often times these films are different than the movies I usually watch. It’s 2021 baybee, time to broaden those horizons.
This past weekend on its fifth anniversary of release, I watched the lesbian romantic drama “Carol” (currently on Netflix) for the first time. I did it because my friends recommended it to me and I wanted a film that would tell me a story that was very different from my own. I watch a lot of content, read a lot of books, and play a lot of video games. More often than not, the stories I’m consuming have a male protagonist and an ample amount of explosions (either literal or metaphorical, ideally both) - so “Carol” a mostly quiet film about a lesbian romance between the main character (an awe inspiring Cate Blanchett) and young woman named Therese (Rooney Mara) in the 1950’s was the perfect film for me to watch to broaden my horizons.
The film opens with an extended shot of a subway grate. You can hear a train rumbling, although it sounds more like a force from within the earth. This is a sound metaphor as the film’s core narrative is about how people’s longings and desires come from a place deep within themselves, kind of emotionally primal, but not in a barbaric way. After that opening shot the film is pretty much bathed in a glorious shimmery hue of 1950’s New York City: bright neon lights, radiant period clothes, and urban colors straight out of an Edward Hopper painting. Yet beneath this shiny sheen lies another world - a world of desires not accepted by the status quo. In an epic yet subtle move by director Todd Haynes as things get more dire and sad for our characters in the story, the color palette of the film becomes more muted and dull.
Speaking of Haynes (himself a gay man), this guy is putting on a masterclass in “showing not telling” storytelling! My favorite is how he shows the difference between the worlds through a visual language that frequently places objects between characters. A lot of times it’s car windows, sometimes it’s a table, or in one of the film’s most breathtaking shots - it’s a whole apartment between two people drawn to each other because they recognize they are different. Another moment in the film literally has a character breaking through these barriers for nefarious purposes but I won’t spoil that here. This type of visual storytelling does wonders for the movie as the caliber of the filmmaking on display here supercharges the drama between the characters!
It helps that Cate Blanchett is positively “gawd tier or should I say goddess tier” in her role. She radiates cool female energy - smoking cigarettes, drinking martinis, and driving around Manhattan in the top down convertible with her friend! I think a lot of mainstream audiences may know Cate Blanchett from her genre work in the “Lord Of The Rings” or “Thor:Ragnarok” but the propulsive confidence that she carries with those more fantastical roles is still present here, albeit in a different form. I love that she’s this confident woman who knows what she wants, a rad flip of the cool guy 50’s New York businessman mythos (think Don Draper). In another connected Universe she would cross paths with Don Drapes himself and I’m sure the encounter would be interesting!
I’ll be honest I definitely kind of went into the movie expecting it to be some kind of rosetta stone to understand queer romance. So when it ended and I didn’t feel like I had discovered the secret truth of lesbianism I was briefly like - damn, how did I miss it? This led me to two truths - both pretty obvious! The first is that I’ve never been a lesbian romance in my life - so how would I understand every single element of the queer experience portrayed here. The second is the most obvious one - the foundations of every love story are the same. All types of people meet through simple or wild ways. People fall in love in magical or simple ways. And people fall in love for simple or complex reasons. Love for everyone regardless of their gender or where they land on the sexual identity spectrum is the same!
Now I would hate to be the cheeseball that adds this article by saying my takeaway from this beautifully told story is “love is love,” but I think that might be it. So rather I’ll leave with a line from the movie, love, just like the amazing symphony of warm colors the film serenades its characters with, is for everyone: “Love is a “perpetual sunrise.”