Depression? This movie feels a lot like how depression feels. It seems like it was easier for her socially to blame an invisible environmental illness rather than an invisible mental illness but she was in the depths of severe depression.
shareOh it's definitely about depression, and anxiety. Saw this when I was having a particularly bad episode--a terrible idea. But whether whatever-it-is is coming from the inside or the outside is the main riddle of the film.
shareI think she hated herself and her life... Even if it was a nice house and a nice car she had. She was just lost. Question is in the film does it just happened out of nowhere. Or was it building up along time we even see it in the movie... From my experience both happen physically and mentally and emotionally. You drain down. You can't sleep well. And everyday is just shot the less you sleep and the less you do. You just go down and down and down. And everything about yourself just slowly dies.
shareI don't think it's as cut and dry as that. I think it's both. There's many scenes where Haynes highlights the many chemicals we put up with in daily life. I found the husband getting ready for work scene particularly effective, before he comes over to her in the bedroom and gives her a hug after covering himself with all sorts of concoctions. I don't have any chemical sensitivities but I've often been in a room with someone who's overdone the perfume, aftershave or hairspray and it makes me gag. I think the director has cleverly combined the two (depression and chemical sensitivity) to keep you wondering what really is going on.
shareIt's intentionally unclear. The mind tries to solve it, but the entire movie is pitch perfect from giving you an explanation, only allowing us themes to react to.
The audience is a lot like Carol's husband, looking for a label to move things along.
Yeah.
shareWhile I agree that it was intentionally unclear, I still believe her ailment was almost entirely psychological. In the scene right before she was rushed to the hospital, I couldn't help but think that if she never saw the fumigators she never would've been hospitalized. Although I am a bit biased in this subject. In university I had an instructor who claimed she was incredibly sensitive to perfumes. The first class of the term she'd cough up a lung and ask the students never to wear perfume in her class. Every week before her class I'd absolutely douse myself in perfume to test her and she never once reacted to me. I was her favourite after all. Now whenever I hear someone say they're sensitive to perfume I can never bring myself to believe them.
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Re: yr instructor
Glad you brought that up. Absolutely: Some people build up an ego-association with an ailment or "sensitivity", and this sounds like what you're referring to.
But this sheds light on Haynes's scenario work in this flick; it's like he knows about this and so he treads carefully, writing/directing "Carol" to not be an *overtly* attention-seeking type.
(Also reminded of the childhood hero in Proust's "Recherche...". He spent time in the household of a bedridden aunt who lived in "Combray". At one point the hero mentions that from time to time folks pondered out loud whether she actually ailed from something or not.)
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And I'd like that. But that 5h1t ain't the truth. --Jules Winnfield