Todd Haynes Explores the Power of Desire in 'Carol'

In the past few years Todd Haynes has embraced looking at America's past through the lens of classic Hollywood. First with "Far From Heaven," his evocation of Douglas Sirk's 1950s melodramas filtered through a contemporary sensibility starring an extraordinary Julianne Moore; then with his nearly eight-hour HBO adaptation of the 1930s sudser "Mildred Pierce" with an Emmy-winning turn by Kate Winslet.

With "Carol" (currently in limited release), he examines how America dealt with homosexuality in the early 1950s. In it he reteams with Cate Blanchett for a truly beguiling love story. Previously Blanchett worked with Haynes in 2007 as one of the numerous actors who portrayed Bob Dylan in the biographical sketch "I'm Not There."

"Carol" takes place in a time and place when the U.S. was in recovery from the most devastating war the world had ever seen and a type of societal order and protocol was percolating -- one that was supposed to unite, but would be alienating to anyone who didn't conform to the rigidity of those dictates.

Keenly adapted

The Red Scare was in full swing and, unbeknownst to many, a Lavender Scare was afoot to expose deviants or any kind.

It's in this milieu that a wealthy suburban (Blanchett) socialite embarks on a romance with Therese, a budding bohemian photographer (an exceptional Rooney Mara), despite the fact that she's married and has a child. What's even more crucial is the fact that they are both women.

Phyllis Nagy has keenly adapted "Carol" from the Patricia Highsmith novel, "The Price of Salt." According to Nagy, the author (whom Nagy got to know during her latter years) was never very fond of most of the filmic incarnations of her work, especially Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train," where many changes had been made from the novel. But Nagy feels she hasn't betrayed the intent or tone of Highsmith's work with her adaptation.

Highsmith published her novel in 1952, but because of its controversial subject matter chose to use a pseudonym Claire Morgan. 40 years later Highsmith put her name to a British re-issue, but changed the title to "Carol."

A gifted cast

Haynes cast his film with remarkably gifted actors that, in addition to Blanchett and Mara, include: Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler and Jake Lacy.

Haynes, Nagy and the ensemble recently assembled at the JW Marriott Essex House to speak about the creating "Carol."

"I was looking at the love story," Haynes offers about his initial interest in the project. "That's something that I feel like I have never directly accomplished in my other films. And that really began with reading 'The Price of Salt,' Patricia Highsmith's beautiful novel and the gorgeous adaptation by Phyllis Nagy, which first came to me with Cate attached. So it was quite a bundle of incentives when it first landed with me in 2013."

He continues: "Unlike war stories, which are about conquering the object, love stories are about conquering the subject so it's always the subject who is in a state of vulnerability and peril at a some level. And through much of 'Carol' that is the character of Therese, who occupies a much less powerful position in the world than Carol, is younger, is more open, is experiencing this woman with a freshness that is different from Carol's life and experience.

"And Carol is the one who comes to Therese with her heart on her sleeve toward the end of the film... What I love about the story is how what happens between the two women really moves them through a series of events which changes them both and ultimately, by the end of the film, they've shifted sides."

A love story

Carol's sexuality is made more complex by her situation and the way homosexuality was seen just a few decades ago. Blanchett shares how she approached the role: "Carol's a deeply private person whose sexuality, in relation to herself, is not unsettled or ambiguous but she lives in a quiet hell because she's not able to fully express herself...The complicated thing for Carol is that she's got an enormous amount to lose. She's found an unhappy balance... because of her love for her daughter. So she's risking a lot. There's a beautiful line that Phyllis wrote describing Therese as being 'flung out of space.' And I think Carol is describing that situation as being in unchartered territory, free-floating, as you are when you fall in love with anyone for the first time. You've never been there before. You're being confronted with questions, confronted with sides of yourself, as Todd suggests, territory you've never been in before."

"One of the great things about the film is it's not a political film, not a film with an agenda," adds Mara. "It's not preaching to the audience so people are able to just watch it for what it is which is a love story between two humans."

Blanchett is quite passionate on her feelings that if a woman makes a choice based on her own survival she somehow risks losing the audience sympathy. "If it was (playing) a gay man, I don't think the question of sympathy would arise. When anyone plays a mother onscreen there's always the sense that there's a right way to parent and that you lose your identity, you become a mother first and foremost. And that's what I loved about Todd. We didn't ever talk about sympathy. And personally as an actor I find the idea of playing for an audience's sympathy kind of a repulsive endeavor. It's like saying, 'like me, like me.' I think it's a terrible position, a tragic position that Carol has been placed in."

Keeping it authentic

Translating the novel, while trying not to take a contemporary view proved a challenge that Nagy was up for. "One of the things I was intent on doing was to not overlay a contemporary psychology onto any of the characters," the screenwriter shares.

"When you overlay any kind of psychology, overview, ethos, you're judging those characters immediately. And it seemed very important for all the nuances of the relationships, among the central quartet, that you don't do that. The first draft was (written) many years ago, but when I started working with Todd on this, it was a pleasure to forget that we were living right now. I didn't have to deal with the methods of communication people might have or the attitudes or judgments. We all have to be very aware of what we're doing (today). And ('Carol') is about instinct. Love is instinct, not calculation."

Out actress Paulson portrays Carol's ex- and still-loyal best friend, Abby, who Paulson played as "still having feelings for Carol." She imparts, "I wonder what I would personally do if somebody I loved, but still had feelings for -- if I was called upon to come in and rescue the person that she currently loves -- I don't know (what I'd do). To me it was a testament to her friendship and her love and the desire to be around Carol and in Carol's orbit no matter what... I think Abby's sense of society -- community -- her friendships, they were probably quite narrow at that time so to lose something like that, the consequences would be too enormous."

More about the gaze

The physicality of the actors in that specific time (1952) plays an immense part in why "Carol" works so well. "For me is was less about the period and more about the gaze," Blanchett explains. "So if a cigarette was held in a certain way, and received by the camera in a certain way, it was because it was being viewed through the prism of someone's desire rather than the prism of the period.

"One of the most revelatory things that Todd showed all of us, that I found really useful was a film called, 'Lovers and Lollipops' (by Morris Engel & Ruth Orkin) It completely subverted everything I'd seen representing the '50s. It was so fresh and immediate I felt like it was happening right then and there in front of me. It was people in clothes, no costumes, existing and behaving with one another just as we do now."

Ruth Orkin and Morris Engel were NYC-based artists and photojournalists who made "psychodramas." "Little Fugitive" (1953) was their most famous film. The couple often used unknown actors and natural light. Haynes chose to show his cast "Lovers and Lollipops" (1956) since it was female-centric and had more relevance in terms of locations.

"It's the story of a single mother trying to ingratiate her daughter to a new boyfriend," explains Haynes. "She was not a wealthy woman like Carol but she was a woman with tremendous poise and this gait and this manner of speech. And it was a kind of example of a femininity that we just do not see anymore. You might glimpse it in your grandmother but it's something that is not produced anymore, culturally. And yet it's not something you would see (portrayed) by actresses in Hollywood films from the period. It gave an insight to something quite specific and lost that I thought would be really useful to Cate and Rooney."

The right look

Capturing the right look for the film was essential to "Carol," which was shot (by cinematographer Ed Lachman who lensed "Mildred Pierce") on Super 16mm. Haynes discusses finding the visual style: "The research kept revealing the city (NYC) in a very early stage of transition out of the war years. The early 1950s were something quite different from the Eisenhower war years that we mostly attribute to that shiny, glossy decade. And I was quite interested and curious about how different this world was than the world in my film, 'Far from Heaven.' And we wanted to bring some of that sootiness and some of that monochromatic color palate to the look of the film and so 16mm was one of the ways we did that. We also found a beautiful city, Cincinnati, Ohio, that had architectural integrity and really preserved its past on many blocks and in many of the interiors. We just loved what Cincinnati offered the look of the film."

As to the bewitching nature of the Carol-Therese relationship, Blanchett opines, "The interesting thing is the obsession, perhaps more so in the book, there's this obsessive pursuit that Therese has of Carol and because of Carol's sense of consequence and the difference in their ages and experiences and also their different socio-economic backgrounds, there's a sense of 'we have to quiet the horses here and not go too quickly because I know this is not going to necessarily end well.' That's delicious stuff to play with because that's what loads up all those silences and every word is not only carefully chosen by the beautiful screenplay but by the women (actors). There's so much stuff between them and keeping them apart."

Different time, different attitudes

Haynes piggybacks, "There are also things that a modern audience has to keep reminding themselves were quite different at this time. Where an older woman could invite a younger woman to lunch and it was absolutely, totally appropriate or they could check into a motel together as two women but if they were an unmarried couple (female) checking into a hotel, at that time, it would have been scandalous. "

Besides sexuality, desire is explored in the feature. "The intense state of desire that we understand Carol through, that we keep filtering Carol through, is of course being cast by Therese's desire for her," Haynes explains.

"That is the machine that is moving the narrative forward through a great deal of the film. You wonder how Carol feels about Therese. There are moments where it feels like a detour from her life. It feels like a sidebar. Am I really spending all this time with this girl who is taking form in front of me? I think all of that gets reevaluated later in the film. And when Carol looks at Therese's body and says, 'I never looked like that.' (That's) a kind of expression of intimacy that is hard to find a parallel to among gay men and certainly not heterosexual couples. It's pretty unique to what women might be able to say to each other; even tough you look at Cate and go, 'yeah, right!'"

"Carol" is now playing in New York and Los Angeles and will be released nationally later in December.

Watch the trailer to Carol: