Similarities between Lolita (1962) and Carol (2015)
I would hardly describe Todd Haynes as Kubrickian however when watching this year's Carol I couldn't help but to think of and draw comparisons to Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Lolita.
Carol and Therese and Humbert and Lolita share a forbidden sort of love and both embark on a road trip where said love blossoms and is ultimately outed.
I am not trying to claim that the relationship between two people of the same sex and the relationship of an adult and a minor are in anyway comparable, as a gay woman I reject this comparison. However strictly in terms of the films, both Humbert and Terese have a sense of wrongness in what they're doing and there is somewhat an inner character struggle and we follow them through their processing of these feelings. In both cases their desire ultimately wins and in both films causes upset, spurring on a more dramatic 3rd act.
In Carol the characters are outed by a private investigator hired by Carol's husband in attempts to show bad character and morals and in Lolita Humbert loses Lolita to another man after finally giving in to his immoral temptation.
The directors, in my opinion correctly present these relationships as they should be, and the characters are rewarded and punished accordingly.
Interestingly Carol rejects common tropes in homosexual film, most specifically the lesbian death trope, otherwise referred to as Bury your Gays. Such tropes often see homosexual characters punished, normally in the form of loneliness and death. However in Carol, Haynes succeeds in presenting an honest portrait of lesbian attraction and the characters are rewarded with their happily ever after, or so we can assume. This is reversed in Lolita, thankfully Humbert's attraction and perversion is never shied away from or romanticised, or at least it tries not to be (some audiences continue to romanticise the subject). Humbert is punished and held responsible for his crimes.
In a heterosexual male dominated culture it is not uncommon for inappropriate and even abusive relationships to be rewarded with the happily ever after ending, as long as it is a heterosexual relationship *cough* Blade Runner.
Thankfully in Lolita this is not the case and thankfully in Carol they are allowed to live and live together which is frightfully uncommon in lesbian film and more recently TV.
Haynes has expressed his admiration for Kubrick and his works in the past and I wonder if when beginning to adapt Patricia Highsmith's novel he thought of Nabokov, and Lolita, and Kurbick.
