Catch the Chaos of “Carnage.”
© A.J. Malouin 2012
(Rating: 2 by A.J. Malouin.) (See our side-bar page “How We Rate Movies”)
(2011/France/Germany/Poland/Spain. Directed by Roman Polanski.)
You are not likely to see quartet of more brilliant and highly strung performances anywhere than you are going to be part of in “Carnage.” Kate Winslet, Christopher Waltz, John C. Reilly, and Jodie Foster play two sets of parents who come together to settle things in a civilized manner when one couple’s 11-year-old son brutalizes the other couple’s.
The meeting starts innocuously enough, but soon comes to resemble The Battle of Trafalgar. Unlike Trafalgar, however, which only involved three combatants, the combatants in “Carnage” keep jumping ship.
Originally framed as a battle of one couple against the other, the sides change to men against women, high-brow against low-brow, cigar-smokers against non-smokers, and even cell-phone users against non-users.
Not for audiences who are looking for a walk in the park, “Carnage” rewards those who stay the course with riveting performances by all four actors.
Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Foster and Reilly) have invited Nancy and Alan Cowan (Winslet and Waltz) into their Manhattan apartment to discuss an attack which took place in a nearby park.
The Longstreet boy has lost teeth and undergone other damage as a result of being slammed in the face with a stick by the Cowan boy.
This is the incident that brings the two sets of parents together. Everything else conspires to tear them apart. Alan Cowan spends most of the meeting talking business on his cell phone. Nancy Cowan becomes ill (“It was probably the cobbler.”) all over several of Penelope’s irreplaceable coffee-table art books. Michael Longstreet tries to get along in a civilized manner, but soon reveals that he “just doesn’t give a damn.”
Long-festering marital problems are revealed to people to hours before had been total strangers. As hinted at earlier, alliances are made and broken along marital lines, career lines, gender lines, cultural lines, status lines, and cell phone lines.
It’s amazing to watch how the alliances form and break up. Michael Longstreet eventually asks, “Anyone for a drink?” Everyone takes him up on it, and the thin veneer of civilization really start sliding off of everyone.
The film is based on the play “God of Carnage,” which originally was titled “Lay Waste to England for Me.” In the end, as the two sets of parents become more childish by the minute, the various verbal fisticuffs seem to threaten both marriages.
It’s all great childish fun, though, marked by innuendos and revelations, and wonderful crackling performances all around.
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