Film
For Roman Polanski, apartments are the stuff of nightmares (The Tenant, Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion) and now he’s back spooking audiences with Carnage set entirely with the confines of a New York flat.
This time, however, the director’s playing the horrors for laughs. Adapted from Yasmina Reza’s hit stage play, God Of Carnage, and featuring a plum cast including Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet, the picture strips away the polite, civilized veneer of middle-class sensibilities to reveal hypocrisy, fear, selfishness, venality and pretension beneath.
The catalyst is a playground altercation between the sons of two couples who get together to resolve the matter in the grownup and enlightened way they like to see themselves.
The incident is glimpsed from a distance during the opening credits, after which the action takes place entirely in the tasteful apartment of Penelope, a worthy writer, (Foster) and Michael (John C. Reilly) whose son was the “victim,” having lost two teeth.
They are playing host to the parents of the aggressor, mother Nancy (Winslet), a nervy investment broker, and lawyer Alan (Christoph Waltz), a vulpine workaholic who keeps breaking off for corporate crisis-talks on his Blackberry.
Can the couples sort out the mess over an espresso and bowl of Penelope’s nice apple and pear crumble? Not likely.
Co-scripted by Polanski with playwright Reza, the tight, fast-moving picture (the running time is a mere 80 minutes) rapidly exposes the fault-lines between the couples and, ultimately, between man and wife.
Restrained but loaded discussions about where the blame lies and disputes over choice of words (“my son did not ‘disfigure’ your son” snarls Alan), build into personal attacks and existential crisis (“we’re born alone and we die alone” wails Michael), fueled by alcohol as Michael cracks open a bottle of 18-year malt whisky.
It is, of course, a great acting showcase and with no attempt at all made to disguise the picture’s stage origins—it’s more a filmed play than a movie—the performances are one of its principal pleasures. Foster is particularly good value as pained, caring-sharing Penelope (“culture is such a powerful force for peace”) who grows horrified as the assumptions of her existence are stripped away, not least that husband Michael shares her values. A kitchen appliance salesman, amusingly played by Reilly, Michael is winningly avuncular and easygoing, seemingly the “everyman” amongst this prickly group, before revealing himself to be rather more of an aggressive, unreconstructed male. It’s a little hard to credit that after years of marriage his wife isn’t aware of his true nature but he’s the most entertaining of all the characters. As the Darwinian, man-is-a-selfish-beast Alan, Waltz is a little too combative from the outset but a treat to watch, while Winslet is fun but given too little to do as his neurotic wife, a bout of spectacular projectile vomiting notwithstanding.
The picture becomes funnier as the aggression picks up but, ultimately, it doesn’t have anything much surprising to say. Nevertheless, when it comes to being stuck in an apartment, Polanski still knows how to make an audience squirm.
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