Writing for Metrograph Cinema, New York, on Todd Haynes’ CAROL

“The outwardly glamorous trappings hinted at in the film’s publicity materials are occasionally apparent—a pivotal sequence at the Ritz-Carlton; Carol’s fur coat and lipstick; martinis for lunch—but they are etched against the soiled, grainy texture of Lachman’s urban landscape. These images and the disarming skill of the lead performances are all of a piece with Haynes’s meticulousness. Despite Haynes’s embracing the sobriety of Nagy’s script, his predilection for iconography (see I’m Not There and Velvet Goldmine) hasn’t fully deserted him: Blanchett looks like pre-Cassavetes Gena Rowlands, while Mara bears an almost insolent resemblance to Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. Haynes is unafraid to wear his own artistic inspirations on his sleeve and he encourages his collaborators to buy into them: he ingested and recommended to the cast Roland Barthes’s compendium Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse before shooting, and even produced a bespoke playlist of period music (Ella Fitzgerald, Johnnie Ray, Benny Goodman) for his actors to listen to while developing their characters.”

Click here to read my piece on Todd Haynes’ CAROL for Metrograph cinema on the occasion of its 2019 Christmas run.