Carol2015

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Haynes sets the tone with a brilliant early sequence set in a Manhattan department store just before Christmas. We are in Eisenhower-era America, a time of new affluence and opportunity. This, though, is the Cold War era, too. The irony, very deliberately accentuated by the film-makers, is that US society is as rigidly conformist in its own way as the communist world. "Compliments of the season from the management," the shop workers are told as they are all given identical Santa hats just as the Christmas rush is about to begin. Little details – the near-identical clothes of the women shopping, the Big Brother-style tannoy voice telling customers what to buy – hint at how rigidly behaviour is controlled.