Carnage has all the elements of terrific parody in which class hatred covered by a thin veneer of respectability cracks under the pressure of child abuse. The Slap: NYC if you will. Adapting Yasmina Reza's popular play The God of Carnage, Polanski (Chinatown, The Pianist), this is an eighty minute assault that recalls the most bitter moments of Whose Afraid Of Virginia Wolf and its ferocious, alcohol-charged verbal attacks. There's something of an adrenalin rush of guilty pleasure in it for audiences as two couples drop their social façade then turn, tearing one another limb from limb. It's Jerry Springer, with a better script.

The film starts innocuously as two boys slug it out in the playground until one assaults the other with a stick and knocks out some teeth. Cut to an apartment where both sets of parents - a well heeled attorney and his well dressed wife (Winslett and Waltz), a writer and her retail husband (Foster and Reilly) - have agreed on memorandum of understanding. It's a terribly civilised one that circumvents any need for litigation, providing the boy apologises. Yet the terms of that apology stirs passion and within moments convivial warmth turns to heated rage. Add a bottle of aged whisky and before you know it, well, see above re Virginia Wolf.

Polanski brings Reza's play to vivid life with little regard for cinematic overtures. It doesn't matter that this is little more than a camera pointed at the stage: three sets, two angles, one hell of an argument. His interest is purely with actors and his cast does not let him down as they bite and snarl their way across the screen in an outpouring of rage, anger and, most excruciatingly, desert. Surprisingly, given the cruel subject matter, Carnage is often extremely funny: one part vitriol to two parts humour and again, Polanski's cast is outstanding as they hit their comedic buttons on cue. Mostly this is a short ditty on the chasm between them and us exemplified when a middle-aged, middle-class, uptight white New York writer screams with a straight-face, “I know all about suffering in Africa!” Hilarious.

// COLIN FRASER



Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and based on Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, is a biting satire that takes no prisoners. In a Brooklyn apartment, two couples meet to discuss how to deal with their sons who were involved in a fight in a local playground. What was hoped to be a cordial meeting turns into the afternoon from hell.

Mixing themes reminiscent of Luis Bunuel’s film Exterminating Angel (1962) and Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), Polanski takes us on an 80 minute journey where we almost feel as the parents do, psychologically, but not physically, trapped in the same room.

With stunning performances by both couples, it is difficult to take sides with either as the drama unfolds and their carefully maintained veneers of middle-class respectability start to peel away. A rather brittle Nancy Cowan (Kate Winslet) and her mobile phone-obsessed husband, Alan (Christoph Walz), are invited to smooth over the issue at their son’s ‘victim’s’ home and meet the parents, a rather prim, but bottled up Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) and her garrulous, working-class husband, Michael (John C. Reilly).

All four actors have fine careers to their credit, but it is this film which really shows how damn good they really are. As the couples turn against each other and wives turn against their husbands and vice versa, it starts to get incredibly bitchy and at times hilarious. At no time do you feel that you are watching a play due to Polanski’s sparkling direction and Pawel Edelman’s excellent cinematography (Edelman worked with Polanski on The Pianist in 2002 and The Ghost Writer in 2010).

Carnage is a fine script indeed with a somewhat abrupt ending that makes an even greater mockery of the parents’ anxiety. I thoroughly recommend this film if you are looking for a good drama soaked in acerbic wit.

// SALT
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