Summary
- Cate Blanchett’s film Carol is considered the best Christmas movie of the last decade due to its elegant and restrained portrayal of a forbidden love story during the holiday season.
- The film centers around the blossoming love affair between department-store clerk Therese and the glamorous Carol, and is set in the 1950s — a time when attitudes towards queer individuals were dangerous.
- Carol‘s atmosphere, taking place in 1950s New York City at Christmastime, taps into a nostalgic fantasy — one that captures the essence of the holidays. This makes it a unique and poignant Christmas movie.
There’s no question about it: Cate Blanchett made the best Christmas movie of the last 10 years. Although Carol isn’t a holiday rom-com or a film about the meaning of the season, it’s a modern classic. Directed by Todd Haynes, the romantic period-piece drama adapts Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 queer literary romance novel The Price of Salt — a work that’s known for being the first (more mainstream) lesbian love story with a happy ending. Carol, much like its source material, centers on the blossoming forbidden love affair between department-store clerk and aspiring photographer Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) and Blanchett’s ever-glamorous Carol Aird.
Not only is the 1950s-set story rife with danger because of the time period’s attitudes toward queer folks, but Carol is also going through a contentious divorce. After Carol’s well-off, well-connected husband, Harge Aird (Kyle Chandler) discovers her brief tryst with Abby (Sarah Paulson), Carol’s ability to be a fit mother is wrongly called into question. Therese, meanwhile, weathers the highs and lows of a first love that takes her on a cross-country road trip, all while she rebuffs the advances of her pushy boyfriend, Richard (Jake Lacy). Although the odds are stacked against them, Carol‘s ending proves that their meeting was no accident.
Carol received an impressive six Academy Award nominations.
Why Carol Counts As A Christmas Movie
Set during the Christmas season, Therese and Carol first meet at Manhattan’s Frankenberg’s department store. At first, a somewhat-flustered Carol is looking for a doll — a Christmas gift for her daughter, Rindy. Having left her shopping too late, Carol discovers that the doll is sold out, but Therese has a different recommendation: a model train set. The connection between the two is instantly magnetic, and only grows after Carol leaves her gloves behind, prompting Therese to reach out. Soon enough, the two spend an afternoon together, selecting a Christmas tree, taking candid photographs, and listening to vinyl records. Of course, the pair’s tentative bliss is interrupted by Harge.
Carol won the Queer Palm at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or.
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Carol reveals that Harge is trying to assume full custody of Rindy, thus isolating Blanchett’s Carol from her only family. In fact, Harge appears earlier than expected to whisk Rindy off to Florida for Christmas. Distraught, Carol decides to take a road trip to escape the stress and invites Therese along for the ride. Carol‘s atmosphere — 1950s New York City at Christmastime — is something that Haynes is able to conjure so perfectly. There’s a kind of nostalgia it taps in to, even if said nostalgia is mostly fantasy, that feels undeniably like the holidays. Fleeting but heart-aching, Carol is like a 1950s Christmas song captured on film.
Carol Is The Best Christmas Movie Of The Last Decade
Able to tap into the feeling of a yesteryear Christmas, Carol is so striking because of its simultaneous elegance and restraint. Unlike other holiday-set romances, which use Christmas bluntly, Carol just happens to be set in late December. Somehow, the characters’ need to hide their happiness, especially during a time of unbriddled joy, adds an appropriately wistful quality to the picture. Therese and Carol find each other, drawn into one another’s orbit, and take refuge in their relationship. The Cate Blanchett movie captures all the feelings that come with spending the holiday with loved ones, but Carol is further charged by the secret newness of its central love story.
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