Movie Review: Carol

Podcast Episode: https://www.theholidaypride.com/podcast/episode/1f3c5dcd/movie-review-carol

---

            Welcome folks! I’m Al and this is the podcast of the Holiday Pride, a Pittsburgh LGBT+ Community Museum.

            On our website, you may have seen a book review for the book The Price of Salt. Well, in 2015, that book about lesbians with a hopeful ending was turned into a long-awaited movie. The movie’s screen writer, Phyllis Nagy, a friend of the book’s author, Patricia Highsmith, had been aiming to make this movie for some time. When Highsmith was alive, she and Nagy had talked about creating the movie, but it wasn’t until the 2010s that such a thing could be accomplished. The Price of Salt was a rarity in the 1950s, when it was written. Not only did Carol and Therese, the main characters, break the stereotypes for lesbians at the time—mainly that they weren’t sick predators who may or may not die at the end of the story—but the story ends happily, hinting that Therese and Carol remain together after the last page.

            While there were sympathetic movies about gays and lesbians in the 50s and the decades following, there was no way the film industry or wider audiences were ready for a lesbian film that wasn’t comedic or overly stereotypical. However, they were finally able to make a movie. While I supposedly watched the movie eight some years ago when I also supposedly first read the book, I don’t remember any of it!

            I already wrote a book review where I do a deeper look at the plot of the book so now, I wonder how well the movie, which I also don’t remember, compares to the book. What did they keep? What did they change? What was good or bad about it?

            So, this episode I want to compare the book, The Price of Salt, to the movie Carol. I’ll interject here and there with facts about both the book and movie as I cover the different pieces of both.

            Before getting into it, I’ll warn that there will be talk of some sexual content.

            I’ll start with a quick summary of the general story. Therese is a young woman working at a department store while trying to find her way in the world. One day before Christmas, an older woman, Carol, comes into the store. They speak briefly, but that’s long enough for Therese to become entranced with Carol. After sending a kind note to Carol, she is invited by Carol to lunch. From there, they get very close. Carol is divorcing her husband and is in a custody battle with him over their daughter Rindy, finding comfort in talking with Therese. While Therese has imposed some motherly traits onto Carol because she was abandoned by her own mother. Therese is trying to get into a field that she wants to be apart of and is dealing with her good friend, Richard, desperately trying to get out of the friend zone.

            Eventually, Carol invites Therese on a trip across the United States. While on this trip, they admit their romantic love for each other and have sex. They also discover that they are being followed by a Private Eye hired by Carol’s husband, Harge. The Private Eye has sent tapes of Therese and Carol having sex back to Harge who is using it as leverage to get complete custody of Rindy. Eventually, Carol has to return to New York to deal with Harge and the charges leveled against her. She and Therese have to stay separate during this time as Carol’s romantic feelings for Therese are being used as evidence that Carol is an unfit mother.

            When they see each other again, Carol admits that she gave up her custody rights to Harge because she was tired of trying to live up to the expectations put upon her as a woman and a mother. The divorce is finalized and Carol invites Therese to live with her. Therese, who is upset with Carol for, in her mind, abandoning her, rejects the offer initially and goes to a party. While at that party, Therese gets flirted with by another woman and thinks about Carol, her friends, and what she wants. In the end, she goes to find Carol and they meet eyes, ending the story hinting that they get back together.

            What did the movie adaption keep from the book? Well, the general plot and the characters are mostly the same…and by that I mean, most of the characters all have the same names. Therese does work at a department store and Carol is going through a divorce with her awful husband Harge. Richard is a terrible nice guy towards Therese trying his best to get out of the friend zone. Therese briefly considers dating her friend Dannie who does kiss her at some point. Carol has a friend named Abby who she once had a brief love affair with.

            Carol and Therese meet at the department store while Carol is buying a Christmas gift for her daughter Rindy. They go on a trip, they have sex on the trip, that sex gets recorded by a PI hired by Harge to take away all of Carol’s rights to custody over their daughter. Carol brings a gun on this trip…the story suggests that they get back together in the end after Therese says no to Carol’s initial offer and goes to a party.

            That’s what is mostly the same between the two works. Which means we have a lot to cover of what they changed. Which…is a lot, but with good reason, but I’ll get there.

            I’ll start with some quick things that are different. Therese isn’t a set designer and isn’t trying to get jobs working for performances in the movie, instead she is a photographer who doesn’t get the idea to get a job with the newspaper until a bit later in the story. Dannie and Phil, the friends Therese makes in pursuit of being a set designer, are now just friends she’s had and play an even smaller role in the story than they did in the book. Therese’s backstory is taken out for the most part so in the film, we don’t know that she was orphaned by her mother and had a crush on one of the nuns that helped raise her. Richard’s family are removed from the story and Richard himself is significantly less important to the story. Therese gets Carol a record as a Christmas gift instead of an expensive bag that she pawns a ring for. Carol gifts an expensive camera to Therese for Christmas where she got her only a small gift in the book. Abby and Therese don’t talk as much, in fact Abby is a much more involved character in the story. Harge and Carol in the book were already at the point in their divorce that neither of them were attempting to reconnect anymore. In the movie, the separation is clearly new and they are both struggling with it. In the book, we never see Rindy once, but we see her multiple times in the movie and Carol is shown to be a mother. Carol buys a train for Rindy, a prominent symbol in the first part of the book, in the movie rather than a doll.

            Okay! Now for the big changes. In the book, Therese’s backstory sets her up to have a few mommy issues that she projects onto Carol practically to the end of the story. There is a scene, when Therese goes to Carol’s home for the first time where Carol literally tucks Therese into bed and gives her warm milk to help her sleep and they have a conversation about how young Therese is. It’s…a lot. This scene was entirely removed from the movie. Which, I completely understand. This scene is a product of its time. While The Price of Salt was a rare lesbian story with a happy ending, it wasn’t created in a vacuum. Other lesbian stories featured one of the lesbians having issuing with their mother and seeking out an older lesbian to project their desire for a mother onto them. Other stories had age gaps, much like in this story. The Price of Salt also didn’t feature kinky sex or overly obsessive behavior. Carol and Therese were entirely unlike the lesbians in other stories, women with mental health issues or who were of lower classes or were genuinely crazy depictions of any person. However, it would be completely unavoidable for the author, Patricia Highsmith, to not be influenced by those other stories.

            Something else that was significantly changed between the book and movie is the removal of a character. In the beginning of book, Therese is invited to the home of a coworker she had at the department store. This coworker was once a seamstress, she tells Therese, but then the department stores took over and she herself started to have health issues. While Theres is at her home, she tries to give her one of the dresses she used to make every day. Listening to this poor woman’s story leads Therese to spiral into an existential crisis. It’s not so obvious, but its clear that in the scene, she greatly fears that she will become just like this woman. Somone who had a great talent but now has worked for a department store for ten years. It’s a really relatable feeling, I think, to fear that everything you’ve done in your life amounts to nothing because you give up or the world was too harsh. Therese recalls this coworker multiple times throughout the story, even sending her a gift while on the road trip with Carol.

            Speaking of that road trip, the constant, background thoughts about that coworker, her misplaced mommy issues on Carol, and the reality of what her relationship with Carol may become come crashing down on Therese at the end of the road trip. In both the movie and book, while on this road trip, Carol and Therese admit their feelings and have sex which is recorded by a PI who sends the taps back to Harge who uses them as leverage to destroy any chances Carol has to have any custody over Rindy. I’ll get to the differences there in a moment, but I want to focus on the point where Therese and Carol depart from each other. In the movie, Therese wakes up to Abby just…being in the hotel room and goes straight back to New York with her. In the book, Therese stays where they ended up for an entire week. In that week, she gets a temporary job at a lumber yard and spends a lot of time at the local library.

            She and Carol send letters back and forth during this time and Therese learns, in the last letter, that Carol appears to be choosing to do whatever she can to try and be able to at least see her daughter. Therese takes this as Carol abandoning her, just like her mother did. That is the breaking point for Therese. The moment where she ‘grows up’ and moves beyond her issues with her mother and becomes an adult.

            So, in the book, we’re focused on Therese coming to age, in the movie, we get to see what happened to Carol that leads to that letter. She tries to see a psychologist. She tries to play nice with Harge, despite still going through with the divorce, before she realizes that all they’re doing is tearing each other down and Rindy is in the crossfire. So, she gives it all up, gives Harge totally custody and just asks to be able to see her daughter once in a while. Then immediately goes to Therese to try and repair things. The movie is about being a queer woman in the 50s rather than a coming of age for a queer woman in the 1950s.

            A coming-of-age story like the one Highsmith writes benefits from a knowledge of the time it takes place. Highsmith wrote about a woman she herself became obsessed with one day. Highsmith was once a young woman at this general time period and had to come of age. It could be argued that Highsmith was writing about a very personal moment in her life and that those feelings were things other lesbians of the time could relate to. See themselves in without the baggage of overtly negative stereotypes.

            So, why change the story so much for the movie? Well, to start, the book wouldn’t make a really exciting movie! The entire book is from Therese’s point of view. We only get her point of view throughout the entire book and she, as I noted in my book review of this story, is an unreliable narrator. Therese spends most of the book assuming things of people and insisting that they clearly think one thing when their actions show something else. For example, when Therese speaks to Abby for the first time in the book, she believes that Abby hates her and is jealous of her. Meanwhile, Abby is just trying to warn Therese that Carol’s life is messy but also encourages Therese to be around Carol. If anything, her actions suggest that despite having had a short affair with Carol, Abby has moved on and is now just trying to support her friend through a hard time. That perspective is something we get to see in the movie, but in the book, we’re trapped in Therese’s head and her version of the world.

            Therefore, all we hear is Therese’s thoughts about everything. There’s not a lot of dialogue or things happening throughout the book. It’s mostly just Therese living her life, having a very sudden and exciting trip with her lover where they’re tailed by a private eye for a little bit of it, and then living her life a bit more maturely after that. While it’s really cool and relatable to read about some of the inner thoughts of a young lesbian trying to make sense of her life, it doesn’t necessarily make for good cinema. Nor is it completely easy to relate to. Some parts of this story require prior knowledge of the time period. This is a book about living life in the 50s. Switching Therese’s passion from set design to photography makes a lot of sense when you realize that the audience in 2015 knows about as much about set design as a 1950s audience may know about photography. The mommy issues, the selfishness of crashing out over Carol choosing her daughter over her wouldn’t translate well to a modern audience, an audience that has a much easier and more comfortable time being queer in public.

            What is easier to understand and makes for a good movie, is the more tragic and harrowing (in comparison to Therese anyway) life of Carol. A mother desperate to stay in contact with her child while her abusive (mostly emotionally but I wouldn’t be surprised if physically in the book) husband is forcing them apart. In a time where women were mostly viewed as commodities still, a lesbian woman with a child had few chances in life to have it all. Being queer was a crime in the 50s in many places and it was often used to separate mothers and fathers from their children when their spouses or former spouses found out. These parts of the movie were very close to the handful of movies that depict this part of lesbian life as well. There was one movie that was all about one woman’s fight to see her child while being supported by her girlfriend. Which means it would be easier for a modern audience to relate and understand.

            So, while the movie and the book are very different from each other in a lot of ways, it’s on purpose and serves the story well. Therese’s mostly internalized point of view is suited for a book, where the story can be all about her thoughts, feelings, and growth. Carol’s more turbulent life suits the screen far more. These stories are complimentary, however. It’s the same story from different sides where the two different people don’t retain the same memories. Of course, that analogy doesn’t entirely work in some areas, but it does work in others. In the book we just get to see all of Therese’s thoughts about Carol, how much she likes her, how much she wants to be with her. From Therese’s point of view, Carol is very aloof and distant. However, in the movie, we get to see the other side. We get to see how much Carol reciprocates those same feelings. It’s kind of great; it made a lot of sense to make these changes.

            Sometimes when a book is adapted, the film will make some interesting choices either to condense a much larger story into a much shorter time frame or to put their own flare into the story. Sometimes those choices are great and make a wonderful film that can stand on its own. Carol is one of those movies, so too is a movie like Ella Enchanted. However, others make too many short cuts or make too many changes and they’re not all good. Take the adaptions of the Divergent series or Maze Runner for example. It’s great to see so much love going into a story about lesbians and to represent it so genuinely. I highly recommend both the book and movie.

            That was a review of The Price of Salt and Carol by the Holiday Pride. Thank you for listening and thank you for sticking around.