Carol (2015)

2. Carol (2015) / The Children’s Hour (1961)

This Todd Haynes film touched upon the changing times of America. We got a look backwards at a time – the 1950’s – where being a member of the LGBT community was unfortunately seen as immoral. The relationship between the titular Carol and the younger Therese was a taboo within the film, and the gossip surrounded them like flies.

These characters were played by two female powerhouses: Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. There were inquisitive people, including male figures. All of these points are worth bringing up because they are all found in the William Wyler drama “The Children’s Hour”.

Even Shirley MacLaine, who starred in “The Children’s Hour”, saw the similarities and saw fit to bring up the sign of the times that can be discussed when comparing the two pictures. In “The Children’s Hour”, the conversation was a lot more subliminal.

The supposed lesbian relationship between Martha and Karen is always alluded to and hinted at, as the actual act is never outright mentioned. The two women (played by MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn) are chastised for the duration of the film based on a lie one of their young students concocted; the lie snowballs and leads to a very tragic end with irreparable damage.

MacLaine brought up the likenesses between this film and “Carol” to The Hollywood Reporter around the time the latter was released. Seeing that “The Children’s Hour” is a bit of an understated film in the filmographies of Wyler, MacLaine and Hepburn, and that the film’s tame approach in educating the harms of bigotry can be compared to the much more raw approach in “Carol”, “The Children’s Hour” earned more time to its legacy.

15. “Carol” (2015)

Director Todd Haynes and cinematographer Ed Lachman’s long-standing professional relationship – dating back 2002’s “Far From Heaven” and recently rejoined as part of this year’s “Wonderstruck” – is a prodigious and profound one, but 2015’s stirring romance “Carol” is the best distillation of their shared powers yet. Continually preoccupied by time and place, and both with a real knack for portraying period settings through every detail, Lachman’s lighting is his most warm yet, conveying the intimacy of the spaces in which Carol (Cate Blanchett) and Therese (Rooney Mara) meet, and more often, hide together. Few romances look this daringly personal, begging the audience to come further inside, while also making it plain that they’re somehow intruding. Bolstered by luminous closeups and teasing peeks toward far-off promises, Lachman’s lensing is as lush as it gets, and just as heartbreaking. –KB

Rest assured, “Carol” disciples: Todd Haynes has heard your exclamations. He knows his small film about a burgeoning romance between two restrained women in 1950s New York attracts the type of fervor more commonly associated with a Marvel leviathan. Haynes’s boyfriend shows him the memes and the Facebook groups and the fan art.

The cultish devotion has ballooned so much since the movie opened two years ago that Here Media, an LGBTQ platform, made an eight-minute comedic short about a support group for “Carol” addicts. File that example under the breezier division of “Carol” mania; the mini-phenomenon assumes all degrees of austerity. Haynes once received a video from a fan who’d compiled earnest testimonials from almost every major country.

“They’re stories of women in China and Korea and all over the world who are like, ‘I’m 65 years old, I’m a lesbian, and I’ve never even had the courage to admit it until I saw ‘Carol,’” Haynes told HuffPost earlier this month. “Just tremendously touching and really powerful stories. [...] I’ve met women on the trains of New York City who have tattoos of lines from the movie on their arms.”

With all its stylistic gloss, Haynes’s work is sometimes accused of being cold and uninviting. Some who don’t worship “Carol” say as much, partly because the film’s characters don’t express their affection with the head-over-heels giddiness expected from big-screen romance.


“Dominant culture needs emotional translation for certain kinds of stories that aren’t their own, and to feel stroked and emotionally protected and given the right kind of recipe of emotional reactions,” Haynes said. “If it’s not given to them, it’s cult. It’s like, ‘I will feel for these characters if I have a customary, expected reaction, but if I’m not getting it, then it’s a problem with that.’ We all have to feed dominant society to make it feel better.”