Wronged women
The best picture not nommed for Best Picture…
At the announcement of this year’s Academy Awards nominees, a howl of protest greeted the absence, for the second year, of a single actor of colour in the 20 positions available. But while the Oscars’ diversity problem was rightly given the podium and #OscarsSoWhite filled timelines on Twitter, another injustice – a great deal lesser, certainly, but still worth noting – slipped by. Namely that Carol, the exquisite, heartrending LGBT drama by Todd Haynes, whose earlier Far From Heaven (2002) explored race relations within the formal framework of a Douglas Sirk melodrama, failed to register a Best Picture or Director nomination.
It’s not, of course, the first time that such a wrong has been committed by the Academy. Quite the opposite: this 6,000-strong body comprising primarily white males with a median age of 63 is so prolific in its misjudgements that it’s hard to know where to begin (though in keeping with the #OscarsSoWhite theme, how about Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing being overlooked for a Best Picture or Director nom at the 1990 awards?). But given the deserved critical adulation that has buoyed Carol since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May – and given the rule-change implemented in 2009 that saw the Academy double down on its options by allowing up to 10 nominations in the Best Picture category – Carol’s shut-out is all the more inexplicable.
Class in a glass
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price Of Salt (first published in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan), Haynes’ adap casts a never-better Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird, a married New York socialite who falls for shop assistant Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara). This being 1952, their love is illicit, further complicated by chasms in age and class. Carol’s transgressive desire even threatens to lose her custody of her infant daughter to cuckolded husband Harge (Kyle Chandler).
But Haynes’ movie, despite its title, is as much Therese’s story as Carol’s. A would-be photographer, this initially watchful and submissive young woman comes into focus before our eyes, starting the film blank and then developing colour and complexity. Her journey finds physical representation in a road trip west, with the America of Edward Hopper
‘The style just adds to the ache, with every object, surface and item of clothing charged with eroticism’
and Vladimir Nabokov visible through steamed windows as Carol and Therese’s repressed desire is finally granted expression within the cocoons of cars and motels. Having previously been shot behind panes of glass or in reflection or on opposite sides of the frame with their figures held stiffly in place by Sandy Powell’s immaculate costumes, the women at last melt and meld: a love scene is tellingly choreographed in such a way that it is hard to establish which limbs belongs to which woman.
Oftentimes when a film is this sumptuously crafted in all departments, from Ed Lachman’s soft photography and Judy Becker’s elegant production design to Carter Burwell’s lush, melancholy score (the soloing clarinet and oboe interweave as the lives of Carol and Therese entwine), the style can hijack the picture. Here it just adds to the ache, with every object, surface and item of clothing charged with eroticism. As with Wong Kar-wai’s swooning tale of extra-marital passion In The Mood For Love, form and content are one, and the cumulative power of all this thrilling detail
hits hard in the final scenes.
Down to earth
Unless, it seems, you belong to the Academy. Perhaps members took Carol’s nomination for granted and voted elsewhere, such has been the universal acclaim, or perhaps the twin nods for the terrific leading ladies (Mara, bizarrely, in the Supporting category) was considered generous enough. More likely, sadly, is that the aforementioned male dominance (76 per cent!) in the Academy’s make-up came into play – it can’t be a coincidence that Haynes, an exponent of female-driven stories ( Safe, Far From Heaven, Mildred Pierce), has never received a Director or Picture nomination.
The on-disc extras grant some love but not enough. Thirty-five minutes of behind-thescenes footage is arranged into chapters focusing on first Blanchett, then Mara, Haynes, writer Phyllis Nagy (who knew Highsmith for the last 10 years of her life and thus felt a “burden of responsibility to just not screw it up”), Lachman, Becker, Powell and Burwell. There’s overlap but plenty of insight too, with Haynes pointing to the universality of the love story (hear that, Academy?), producer Christine Vachon identifying Carol’s “hyper-reality mixed with hyper-cinematic fantasy and beauty”, and both Powell and Becker pointing out that 1952 belongs to the “post-war ’50s” and not the “Eisenhower ’50s”. Meaning? Carol is drop-dead gorgeous to look at but its beauty is earthy and besmirched, with the action shot in Super 16mm and painted in neutral colours and greens and dirty pinks to keep things grounded.
The only other extra is a dip into five Q&As conducted in US cities when Haynes and co. toured the movie. Much passion and eloquence is on display, with Mara pinpointing that it’s not only teenagers who undergo rites-of-passage: “Carol is a beautiful coming-of-age story for both women at very different points in their lives,” she says. Maybe it’s not too late for the Academy to learn lessons and do some growing, too.