Carol is the newest film from Todd Haynes, starring Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Kyle Chandler.
It tells the story of Carol’s (Blanchett) and Therese’s (Mara) budding romantic relationship in 1952 New York. A press conference was held recently in New York with director Haynes, screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, and Jake Lacy, in which they discussed the film and the creative decisions and processes behind it.
Joe Neumaier: Todd, I wanted to start out with you and ask about the emotionalism of the film. How did you approach the film? How did you envision its emotions and bring the visuals to the screen?
Todd Haynes: Well, I really was taking it on as if for the first time looking at the love story, something that I felt I hadn’t really ever accomplished directly in my other films. And that really began with reading The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith’s beautiful novel, and [then reading] the gorgeous adaptation of Phyllis’s script. It first came to me with Cate [Blanchett] attached, so it was quite a bundle of incentives when it first landed with me in 2013. But love stories are, unlike war, which is about conquering the object, love stories are about conquering the subject. So it’s always the subject who’s always in a state of vulnerability and peril at 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 experiences this woman with a freshness that is different from Carol’s life and experience. But what I love about the story is how what happens between the two women really moves them through a series of events which change them both, and ultimately, by the end of the film, they’ve shifted sides. Carol is the one who comes to Therese with her heart on her sleeve toward the end of the film. So all of that made a lot of smaller elements of looking and who’s being looked at and who is doing the looking and all of those questions something that is very conducive to the cinematic language.
Neumaier: Cate . . . Something that Todd just mentioned is [Carol’s] vulnerability. I think that a lot of the keys to the character are both vulnerability, a fear, a sense of being in a time and place where maybe she isn’t able to get out of. There are moments where she asks Therese, “Is that what you want to be? A photographer? You kind of get the sense that those are questions no one ever asked Carol. What were some of the keys for you as you approached the character?
Cate Blanchett: I think that Carol’s a deeply private person who’s sexuality and in relationship to herself is not unsettled or ambiguous, but she doesn’t play in a quiet hell because she’s not able to fully express herself. But she has not been in a loveless— everyone keeps describing her as being in a loveless marriage. I think that the complicated thing for Carol is being confronted by Therese at the time in her life that it is is that she’s got an enormous amount to lose. She’s found an unhappy balance with Harge because of her love for her daughter. So she’s risking a lot. And there’s a beautiful line that Phyllis wrote where Carol describes Therese as being “flung out of space.” But I also think Carol’s also describing that situation of being in uncharted territory, free floating, as you do when you fall in love with anyone for the first time. You’ve never been here before. You’re being confronted with questions, confronted with signs of yourself that suggests territory you’ve never been in before.
Neumaier: Rooney, Therese is often seen in frames or boxes on screen, things she needs to break out of. I’m wondering if there’s anything you did to map out her journey, stages of Therese that you thought of as you approached the role.
Rooney Mara: Yeah. I mean me and Todd talked a lot about that. And we had two weeks of rehearsal in Cincinnati with everyone. And that was pretty much what we were doing in rehearsal. Not specifically mapping out Therese’s journey, but sort of mapping out the entire script. You know, when you shoot a film, obviously you don’t shoot it in order, so you kind of have to do that with every facet of this script.
Neumaier: Speaking of the script, Phyllis you knew Patricia Highsmith towards the end of her life. This is such a lovely adaptation of The Price of Salt. What was it like to translate the story’s 1952 world without necessarily looking at it through a modern sensibility?
Phyllis Nagy: Well, I think really that was one of the things that I was intent on doing, to not overlay a contemporary psychology onto any of the characters. When you overlay any kind of a psychology, an overview, an ethos, you’re judging those characters immediately. And it seemed very important for the nuances of the relationships among the quartet, the essential quartet, that you don’t do that. So it was very easy for me to forget about— Well, the first draft was many years ago, but when I started working with Todd on this, it was a pleasure to forget that we were living right now. We didn’t have to deal with all the methods of communication that people might have had, or the attitudes, or the judgments that are now… We all have to be very aware of what we’re doing. And this is about instinct. Love is instinct. Not calculation. Although the circumstances of their lives require some calculation in dealing with it.
Neumaier: Kyle, one of the things that I love about this beautiful film is that everyone has got layers, everyone has got nuances. And Harge is complicated in his own way. In your performance, we see how confused he is, that somehow he has been cheated of the life he was expecting. How did you work to humanize him despite some of the belligerence and anger that he shows in the way we get to know that character?
Kyle Chandler: Just listening to what you just said, one of the really aspects of playing this character, you know, he is certainly what he is on the screen… The way you just spoke about how you put it together, you left everything open — for Harge, anyway — to actually do as he will. And define those spaces. And I think that was interesting, because as I was playing it, it allowed me— I think at some point I realized that it could be a stereotypical character very easily, and portray what you would imagine a guy from the ’50s under these circumstances… But what happened was, at some point the worst possible in a man’s life, or a woman’s, and they’re in love, is when they realize that they’re not in love anymore. And this character never realized that he wasn’t in love anymore. He was always in love. And he was intensely in love. And he had this little child. And not just his life, not just his child, but his family unit. So important to him. But he refused to give that up. So what [Todd] said allowed me and the character to stay within that and never lose love or respect, but still be very confused on what is going on. Which goes back to that one direction you [Todd] gave me when [Rooney] was walking into the room, and I look across and go, “Who are you, basically?” And Todd gave me a specific direction there that really turned me. And for me, this whole thing was so much fun that it was refreshing. Because of what the material is and the way it was presented.
Neumaier: Sarah, Abby’s friendship with Carol was so meaningful, but Abby’s also a window into the life Carol could be leading. Maybe she’s sort of a guide in how to live it in some ways. What were some of the keys to you as you approached it? Because it seems as though Abby’s a beat ahead, maybe, of Therese, of Harge, and maybe even Carol.
Sarah Paulson: I really tried to just think about friendship and selflessness and kind of unwavering loyalty. Because I think Abby still has feelings for Carol. I wonder what I personally would do if somebody I loved who I still had feelings for, if I was sort of called upon to come in and rescue the person that she currently loves… I don’t know. To me it was a testament to her friendship and her love and her desire to be around Carol, in Carol’s orbit no matter what. I think Abby’s sense of society — I don’t mean literal society — but her community, her friendships, they were probably quite narrow at that time, and to lose something like that, the consequences of something like that would be too enormous. I just started thinking about things like that.
Neumaier: Jake, if Harge is sort of one type of guy, one type of 1952 guy, Richard is another. But there’s a real nuance there. I’m wonder if, as you were working with the character, you were finding the nuances and levels of subtlety, because it feels like as if Richard really wants to understand something about Therese. But he really has a sense of himself as a guy in 1952, and he asked her to marry him, and why she doesn’t want to. Is there any sort of subtlety there that you were going for that was naturally in the script?
Jake Lacy: Well, I’d say it was definitely in the script. That subtlety was definitely not thanks to me, for sure. Todd spoke a little when we first met about the idea that, for Richard, the world is there to take. He’s young, he’s in New York, he’s first generation, he’s smart, he’s handsome, he’s got a job, he’s got a girl, the world is his for the taking. And yet it slips away from him. Thank God that it does, because otherwise he’s fifteen years or ten years earlier than Carol and Harge. And in [their] world he and Therese stay together, created a life, and then wasn’t a life anymore. I don’t know if I can speak to the subtlety. I think that may be a viewer experience more than may attempt at creating something. But I do think it’s really, for Richard, the idea of a dream that then falls apart, or someone’s not willing to be a part of that dream. And trying to wrangle them into it, and they’re not meant to be there.
A question from the audience.
Even though this is some 50-odd years ago, 60 years ago, it is now a period film. And with regard to the physicality, I loved how very specifically you moved, and even just the body language of that time versus today is quite different. And I wondered how you achieved that.
Blanchett: For me, personally, it felt less about the period and more about what Todd was referring to about the gaze. And if a cigarette was held a certain way and being received by the camera a certain way, it was because it was being viewed through the prism of someone’s desire rather than the prism of the period. And one of the most revelatory things that Todd showed all of us that I found really useful was a film called Lovers and Lollipops. And it completely subverted everything that I had seen of the ’50s represented. It was so fresh and immediate. I felt that it was happening right there and then in front of me. It was people in clothes, not in costumes, existing and behaving with one another, just as we do now. And I think when you experience a love story, whether it’s in the 1400s in China or in 1952 in New York, it feels as if it’s a timeless connection. And so the time period is an important impediment, and all good dramas need hurdles to be gotten over by the protagonists, but it became secondary. But although the girdles did influence the way… There was a scene when Therese was playing the piano, and I was positioned on the floor, and I thought, “I have to be graceful.” And I rehearsed a lot so I could get up in one movement.