Carol - Happy Holidays & Happy New Year Because Two Women Are In Love and Two Guys Are Mad About It

THE ARC'S TAKE

We spend most of Carol braced for the tragic, closeted ending 1950s convention demands, so when Highsmith and Haynes hand the women the reins instead, it recasts everything we just watched as an argument that withholding psychology isn't distance — it's trust.

Carol takes place in the "liminal space" that floats between Christmas and the start of the new year, and it occupies the space held for best films ever made that didn't win and weren't even nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards... possibly because it is a classic story told in a slightly unconventional manner or because of the same conscious or unconscious prejudices that the characters in the story itself must live through. You can and should watch this film any (and arguably multiple) times per year: once for the holidays, once for the visual story, and once for every time you you want to feel like you're falling in love but it's complicated.

If you love the film already, then please, also listen to Subtextual's episode about "Carol" because they do an even longer breakdown and find it to be a warm Christmas hug and they're one of the best film review podcasts in general as well!

https://www.instagram.com/subtextualpod/

EPISODE SUMMARY

We watch Todd Haynes' Carol and find a movie so visually perfect it borders on distracting — gorgeous, glacial, and quietly radical for giving its women an ending where nobody has to hide. They dig into Patricia Highsmith's original pseudonymous novel, the 1950s photographers who shaped the film's look, and why an ending they expected to be tragic turned out to be the twist of the whole thing. No familiarity with the film required — just bring patience for a debate about gloves left behind "on purpose."

WHERE TO WATCH

Streaming availability as of 2026-07-05.

• Netflix (streaming with subscription)
• Amazon Prime Video (rent or purchase)
• Apple TV (rent or purchase)
• Fandango At Home (rent or purchase)

Somehow the movie about repressed feelings and things left unsaid has landed on Netflix without anyone making a fuss about it — no farewell tour, no expiring-soon countdown clock, just sitting there in the queue like it's always been there. For a film so obsessed with what people don't announce out loud, that feels almost on brand.

New To The Show?

New episodes of The Arc arrive roughly once a week, but they are ephemeral beings that sometimes take longer — you're encouraged to start from the beginning with Episode 01: The Princess Bride.

RSS

A Long Summary

Carol (2015, directed by Todd Haynes) is a love story told in the liminal week between Christmas and New Year's — that no-man's-land of time when nobody quite knows what year it is or who they're supposed to be. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, a novel she first published under a pseudonym and only put her own name to decades later, it follows Therese (Rooney Mara), a young shop girl who can't decide her own lunch, and Carol (Cate Blanchett), an upper-class New Jersey woman who is, in Jaclynn's words, gay as the day is long and about to lose custody of her daughter over it. Carol leaves her gloves behind at the department store — accidentally or on purpose, though we spend a good while settling firmly on on purpose, on purpose — and the whole thing unspools from there. It's a movie that was passed over entirely at the Oscars, which feels like either a coincidence or exactly the kind of quiet punishment the film itself is about.

What we actually spent the hour on is the strange trick at the center of it: this is a film where almost nothing is said out loud, where the characters announce they want to ask questions and then don't ask them, and yet none of us ever felt lost for a second. Robby came in ready to argue that the constant shifts in perspective stretched the story too thin — a Brechtian "you are watching something, not living it" — while Cole and Jaclynn pushed back that the whole structure is a con that pays off, a fake-out opening scene we all misread completely until the ending rewrote it into a genuine plot twist. Robby also, at some length, describes the movie he actually wanted (Sarah Paulson's Abby, a cigarette, and the drive home nobody filmed), which is a movie that does not exist. Somewhere in there Cole confesses to a war story about handing off a camera rig in shame after trying to shoot a wobbly B-cam himself, which is the closest this show gets to a director's commentary track.

The honest thing we keep circling is whether something being beautiful makes it interesting — because Carol is shot like Vivian Maier and Esther Bubley photographs come to life, every frame a still you'd hang on your wall, and two of us cheerfully admit we didn't much like either lead and mostly just wanted to stare at them and get to the sex scene. If you want a warm-Christmas-sweater reverence, that's not quite us; if you want three people taking a gorgeous movie apart to figure out how it knows so much while showing so little, and disagreeing honestly about whether that's a feat or a limitation, this is the conversation. As always, you don't need to have seen it — though about five minutes in, you'll want to.

CREATIVES

• Todd Haynes — Director — also: Far From Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015)
• Phyllis Nagy — Screenwriter — also: Carol (2015), Mildred Pierce (2011)
• Elizabeth Karlsen — Producer — also: Carol (2015)
• Stephen Woolley — Producer — also: Carol (2015)
• Christine Vachon — Producer — also: Carol (2015), Far From Heaven (2002)
• Edward Lachman — Cinematographer — also: Far From Heaven (2002), I'm Not There (2007), Carol (2015)
• Carter Burwell — Composer — also: Carol (2015)

CAST

• Cate Blanchett — Carol Aird — also: Blue Jasmine (2013), The Aviator (2004), Elizabeth (1998)
• Rooney Mara — Therese Belivet — also: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), The Social Network (2010)
• Sarah Paulson — Abby Gerhard — also: American Horror Story (2011–), Ocean's 8 (2018)
• Kyle Chandler — Harge Aird — also: Friday Night Lights (2006–2011), Argo (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
• Jake Lacy — Richard Semco — also: The Office (2012–2013), The White Lotus (2021)
• John Magaro — Dannie McElroy — also: Not Fade Away (2012), First Cow (2019)
• Cory Michael Smith — Tommy Tucker — also: Gotham (2014–2019)
• Carrie Brownstein — Genevieve Cantrell — also: Portlandia (2011–2018)

AWARDS

Here's Carol's awards history:

• Best Actress (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION
• Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION
• Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION
• Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — NOMINATION
• Best Original Score (Carter Burwell) — NOMINATION
• Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) — NOMINATION

(Carol received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, and Best Adapted Screenplay.)

Golden Globes

- Best Motion Picture – Drama — NOMINATION

- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION

- Best Original Score — NOMINATION

(It led the Golden Globe Award nominations with five, for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actress for Blanchett and Mara, Best Director, and Best Original Score)

BAFTA Awards

- Best Film — NOMINATION

- Best Direction (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION

- Best Leading Actress (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

- Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION

- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — NOMINATION

- Best Production Design — NOMINATION

- Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell) — NOMINATION

- Best Makeup & Hair — NOMINATION

(Steven Spielberg's war drama Bridge of Spies and Todd Haynes' Carol led all nominees with nine nominations each, including nominations across Best Film, acting, screenplay, cinematography, production design, costume design, and makeup and hair categories.)

Cannes Film Festival (2015)

- Queer Palm — WIN

- Best Actress (Rooney Mara, tied with Emmanuelle Bercot) — WIN

(Best Actress: Rooney Mara for "Carol" and Emmanuelle Bercot for "Mon Roi" (Shared Prize); For its heartbreaking performances, stunning mise-en-scene, and overall mastery of craft we are proud to award CAROL with the Queer Palm... The film we've chosen to award is more than a movie, it's a moment in history. The first time a love story between two women was treated with the respect and significance of any other mainstream cinematic romance.)

Writers Guild of America (WGA)

- Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION

Independent Spirit Awards

- Best Feature — NOMINATION

- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — NOMINATION

- Best Female Lead (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Best Female Lead (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

- Best Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — NOMINATION

- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — WIN

Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards

- Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (Cate Blanchett) — NOMINATION

- Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Rooney Mara) — NOMINATION

Critics' Choice Awards

- Best Picture — NOMINATION

- Best Director — NOMINATION

- Best Actress — NOMINATION

- Best Supporting Actress — NOMINATION

- (plus additional nominations across craft categories)

New York Film Critics Circle

- Best Film — WIN

- Best Director (Todd Haynes) — WIN

- Best Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) — WIN

- Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman) — WIN

Los Angeles Film Critics Association

- Best Music/Score — WIN

SOURCE MATERIAL

Carol is adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel The Price of Salt (later republished under the title Carol), a 1952 romance novel by Patricia Highsmith, republished as Carol in 1990. You can read more about the novel here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Salt

Bookshop.org search link: https://bookshop.org/beta-search?keywords=The%20Price%20of%20Salt

FUN FACTS / PRODUCTION TRIVIA

Ed Lachman fought hard for a texture most modern audiences would never consciously notice — he insisted on shooting Carol on Super 16mm rather than 35mm or digital because he felt "even 35mm negative is so grainless that it almost looks digital when you go through a DI," and wanted a grain structure that felt alive rather than "pixel-fixated" like digitally added grain. [Source]

The film's visual language wasn't drawn from other movies at all — Lachman and Haynes deliberately skipped cinematic references and instead built the look around a group of mostly female mid-century photojournalists, telling Indiewire "We looked at the time not through its cinema, but through its photographers that documented New York... mid-century photographers like Ruth Orkin, Ester Bubley, Helen Levitt and Vivian Maier." [Source]

Lachman's devotion to celluloid nearly cost him more than a stylistic choice — during production, he learned the New York Film Lab that processed the movie's negative was being shut down and its equipment scrapped, so he personally arranged to have roughly a quarter-million dollars of lab equipment hauled out and stored in his grip's warehouse rather than see it destroyed. [Source]

Rooney Mara initially turned down the role of Therese entirely. After making four films back-to-back and feeling burned out, she told The Hollywood Reporter she "didn't think I'd be good in it," and only came back around to the part once Haynes joined the project and she was in a different headspace. [Source]

FAMOUS QUOTES

• "The problem is that there is very little chemistry between the actresses, and Haynes and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy are far too studied in their depiction of passion." — Peter Rainer, quoted via Metacritic [Source]
• "The most impressive performance in the movie is given by Blanchett's elaborately coiffed, cast-iron hairdo." — Peter Rainer, quoted via Metacritic [Source]
• The Camerimage jury, awarding cinematographer Ed Lachman its top prize, called the film's look one of "aristocratic grace and elegance," noting its "delicate and precise exploration of emotion through color and light".
• Photographer and writer Teju Cole, discussing Saul Leiter's photography (a major visual reference point for the film), wrote that "the overriding emotion" in Leiter's work is "a stillness, tenderness, and grace that is at odds with the mad rush of New York street life."

Dive Deeper into Carol

The Film Comment interview with Todd Haynes is essential reading for anyone who wants the director's own account of the film's visual language — Haynes walks through how he and Ed Lachman moved away from referencing other movies and instead built the look from 1950s photojournalism, citing photographers like Ruth Orkin, Helen Levitt, and Esther Bubley, plus the more recent rediscovery of Vivian Maier.

Variety's interview with cinematographer Edward Lachman digs even further into the craft side, including how he and Haynes deliberately avoided the Douglas Sirk melodrama references they'd used on Far From Heaven and instead looked at mid-century photojournalists, many of whom happened to be women, to shape the film's cultural and visual signifiers. Lachman also traces a lovely detail the podcast touches on — how Highsmith's original novel had Therese working as a set designer, and it was screenwriter Phyllis Nagy's idea to make her a photographer instead, letting her camera work carry her evolving subjectivity.

For listeners more interested in the Highsmith side of things than the filmmaking side, the Dead Ladies Show podcast ran an episode on Highsmith that connects directly to Carol's origins, noting that Highsmith wrote several books that redefined the thriller, including one of the few stories to give a lesbian couple a happy ending — The Price of Salt, adapted into the 2015 film starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. It's a good companion piece if you want the messier, real-life backstory behind the novel — the book was inspired by one of Highsmith's own obsessions with a woman, at a time when she herself was a closeted lesbian engaged to a man.

SOUND DESIGN ATTRIBUTION

Sound design via Freesound.org and Envato.

• S: Sfx_Cigarette_Int_Putting out Cigarette by Group39 | License: Creative Commons 0
• S: OSS Expiration cigarette by Blowtape | License: Creative Commons 0
• S: LightingAJoint.mp3 by shelbyshark | License: Creative Commons 0