Carnage is a film about breaking down the barriers of what you can and can’t say in social situations. What people really think is often not what they communicate to others publicly, and the film tackles that by throwing politeness out-the-window and scratching away the surface layers of civility.
Based on the award-winning play “Le Dieu du carnage” (God of Carnage) by Yasmina Reza and co-written and directed by Roman Polanski (The Pianist), Carnage centres on two couples, played by Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly and Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz. After a fight in the park between the two couple’s respective children, they decide to meet and civilly discuss the incident like adults… or at least that’s the plan.
I must be clear in saying that I haven’t seen the play the film is based on, so I can’t judge the accuracy of the adaptation or how it compares in quality. But nevertheless it’s quite clear from the start that it’s based on a stage play because of the fact that – with the exception of short segments bookending the film – it’s set entirely in one apartment, and mostly in one room. To an extent this is contrived, particularly when every time one of the couple’s goes to leave they are forced to stay. However, when the performances and dialogue are this good it’s hard to care about the rather rigid set-up.
Since the movie isn’t eventful in terms of going from place to place, the film relies heavily on the performances. Luckily we’re in safe hands with some of the best actors working today, each of them giving brilliant performances in their own rights. Winslet is the obvious stand-out, not least because she gets some of the best dialogue and a particularly memorable scene which I won’t spoil here. However, for my money Foster was the real strongest point. She’s the one who gets the most emotional heavy-lifting to do as she tries to defend her son under a barrage of accusations and insults.
The women may steal the show but the boys put up a good (verbal) fight as well. Waltz, most famous for his Oscar-winning performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, is the most level-headed of the four, only truly wavering once he loses his precious mobile phone he never seems to be able to put down. Lastly we have Reilly, an actor unfairly associated with his comedic antics with Will Ferrell, but who is actually a fantastic dramatic actor. He gets to shine here as the husband of Foster, fed up of being told what’s what in his own home.
Polanski has always been quite a diverse film-maker, from his early work like Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown through to The Pianist and his last film The Ghost. However, if you didn’t know that Carnage was directed by him it would be hard to guess. It’s got less scope than we might expect from him, and not just because it doesn’t move from one location, which means it’s both more focused and less ambitious than some of his other work.
There’s an overall feeling that Carnage could have a lot more to say, and the general consensus is that the play very much does that. But as it stands the film is an often flat-out hilarious experience, featuring terrific performances, ultimately about four people in a room shouting the truth at each other for 80 minutes. And despite its obvious staginess, it works.
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