Carol (2015)

directed by Todd Haynes

Claire Winkler

The first time I ever came out as bisexual to someone in person was early in my senior year of college, after an improv show. The inherently and slightly embarrassingly liberal arts-ness of those circumstances aside, I can still vividly remember how I felt in the moments before—locked in my campus apartment bathroom, the faucet running to give me some excuse to be in there, sweaty hands gripping the sides of the toothpaste-spattered sink. The fluorescent lights above me buzzing and flickering; my pulse, thready and skipping in the soft hollow of my throat. The person I was about to tell was a friend, a good one, and moreover had been out as a lesbian since mid-high school. If anyone would understand, it would be her. Even still, it didn’t matter. I was scared, because it’s scary. It will always be a little bit scary, no matter how many times I do it—to meet someone’s eyes and hold out my clumsy, imperfect little heart and say to them, I’m letting you see me now, if you’re willing to look.

She responded with as much warmth and kindness as I’d hoped she would; welcome to the sapphic sisterhood, she said, which made me laugh, and that was that.

Except that wasn’t that, or, rather, it didn’t end there, not quite. My friend and I were both English majors, same year, and we shared a few different classes. One in particular was on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and it also happened to be the last class of the day for us both. One afternoon, early in the first semester, we got coffee together after that class finished. Then we did it again, and another time after that, and we kept it up until these coffee dates were unspoken yet firm standing engagements. We would often stay for hours, talking about everything and anything, from feminist theory to BBC Sherlock, from deep-rooted fears to the most bizarre Marvel fanfictions we’d ever read, from childhood traumas to our favorite movies. The walls of the coffee shop were windows, and outside of them people passed endlessly back and forth. The world moved determinedly on, but there we were in the center of it, completely still, content to be going absolutely nowhere. Content to simply be, and be with each other.

*

If you are an indie film fan, a gay girl who used Tumblr between 2015 and 2018, or both (I happen to be both), Carol is probably a title that’s very familiar to you. It tells the story of a forbidden love affair between a young photographer, Therese (Rooney Mara), and an older woman, the titular Carol (Cate Blanchett), who is going through a difficult divorce. Much of the film follows the spontaneous road trip west the two women take together. For nearly half the runtime, Carol and Therese are either traveling, or waiting somewhere until they can travel again.

In fact, almost all of Carol occurs within public spaces, even before their trip begins—department stores and restaurants, New York City streets and cars, darkened offices after the workday has ended and mostly empty movie theaters. This aspect of Carol appeals to me nearly as much as the sapphic of it all. There are few things I treasure more dearly than a long walk through whichever city I currently find myself in. Greta Garbo, I think, got it extremely right. So did Clarissa Dalloway. There’s something so deliciously thrilling about being surrounded by people yet totally alone; an anonymous face among a sea of anonymous faces. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to being invisible.

There’s safety in that invisibility, too, particularly when you are a queer woman; particularly when you are a queer woman partnered with another queer woman. It’s not an accident that so much of Carol is set out in public; it takes place in the 1950s, and a woman taking another woman home with her easily could—and eventually nearly does—spell disaster for them both. You might think this would make the film feel less intimate, but you would be wrong. They are hiding in plain sight, Carol and Therese. To everybody around them they’re absolutely nobody; to each other, they are the only two people to ever exist. They fall in love as they drive through backroads, as they eat at grubby diners, as they rest at nameless motels. They fall in love as they run away from something awful, and towards nothing in particular. The first time they have sex is on New Year’s Eve, the most liminal of holidays, predicated around waiting for one thing to end and another to start.

The question of what, exactly, Carol and Therese are hiding from remains to be answered. It would be easy, and not incorrect, to say that it’s from a puritanical world that either can’t or won’t understand that two women can love each other, but I’m not sure that’s it. Or, at least, I’m not sure that’s it alone. When Carol and Therese first meet, Therese’s haircut—a pageboy—is nearly identical to the haircut of Carol’s young daughter, Rindy. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Nor do I think it’s a coincidence that Carol sets her sights on the road trip with Therese immediately after receiving some very bad news regarding her custody of Rindy. Much of the central tension in Carol stems from Carol and Therese each wanting a different side of the same impossible coin. Carol wants to love a romantic partner in the pure, simple, straightforward way she loves her daughter. Therese, for her part, wishes to be loved in that same manner. A love without hurt, without conflict, without complications. In this way, Carol and Therese are each other’s perfect match, and they are each other’s undoing.

Carol is not a horror movie, but there are plenty of shots that could readily find a home in one. Third person point of view shots of Carol and Therese, filmed from a distance, blur the line between viewer and voyeur. Is it me who’s watching them? Or is it someone else? I find myself asking that latter question often when my fiancee and I are out somewhere together. We’ve learned to be vigilant, she and I, because we know all too well what can happen to queer women who aren’t.

It happens in Carol. Carol and Therese are, in fact, being watched; Carol’s vindictive ex-husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), hired a private investigator to follow her. The PI, too, hides in plain sight. He’s undercover as a “notions” salesman, and there is a scene that’s very funny the first time you watch it (and less funny subsequent viewings after, once you know who he is) in which he unsuccessfully attempts to sell his products to Carol and Therese. He’s bumbling and unassuming until he’s not, until Carol receives a telegram from Harge’s lawyer and realizes what’s been done, until she throws open a hotel room door and there the PI stands, waiting for them, his recording equipment as violent as any gun.

It’s a nauseating, violating moment, the reveal that even when Carol and Therese thought they were invisible they could be seen; that they were never safe, not even in Waterloo, Iowa, far away from anyone who’s ever known them. When my fiancee and I were first dating, my mother tearfully asked that we not hold hands when we were out together in my small hometown. People will know, she said, and although it hurt I understood what she meant. When you’re queer, you are vulnerable. That’s a lesson you learn quickly as a queer person, I’ve found—the moment you start feeling safe is the moment you aren’t anymore.

Carol and Therese are forced to uncouple after the events of their road trip, though Carol does leave Therese a letter explaining why. I want you to imagine me there to greet you, writes Carol towards the letter’s end, our lives stretched out ahead of us, a perpetual sunrise. Months pass. Carol divorces Harge; Therese gets a newspaper job. The movie finishes on a hopeful, if ambiguous, note. The two women reunite at a restaurant and lock eyes from across the room. Therese’s expression is anxious, but determined. Carol’s smile, the tilt of her head: they are questions as much as they are answers. The theme swells. The camera lingers on Carol’s face. The credits roll.

It’s a matter of great debate in some circles, whether Carol and Therese end up together. Personally, I’m not sure it matters, and, if I’m being completely honest, I don’t think I want to know either way. Closure is overrated, largely because true closure, the kind that leaves both parties equally satisfied, is rare. I also think closure isn’t the point of Carol. I understand desiring it, particularly as it is a rare thing to find in a queer film, but I prefer existing in a perpetual state of maybe; when anything might happen, for better or for worse.

*

I do, inevitably, sometimes still find myself thinking about my coffee date friend, nearly eight years removed from those sweet, lingering afternoons. She was, I think, the first person I ever let myself love honestly. That’s not something I ever told her. I’m not sure if she knew. We aren’t in touch anymore, and I don’t feel compelled to seek her out and share that information now. To have felt that love, that I let myself feel it, was enough.

I want you to imagine me there to greet you, Carol wrote in her letter to Therese, our lives stretched out ahead of us, a perpetual sunrise. Perhaps that’s the most any of us can truly hope for. Not endings, nor beginnings, but those stolen, holy moments in the middle.

Claire Winkler lives, writes, & teaches 4th grade in Richmond, VA, where she spends too much money on books and too much time watching movies. She is engaged to marry, coincidentally, another Claire. Her work has previously appeared in Pinball magazine and wig-wag, and she has served on the editorial staff of The Rappahannock Review. You can find her on Twitter @well_i_dclaire.