Symbiotic Reviews

Carnage Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz Director: Roman Polanski Running Time: 1 hour 19 minutes
by Jericho Cerrona January 17, 2012

Three essential caveats are necessary to work out director Roman Polanski’s black comedy of manners, Carnage. They are as follows: affluent white people disguise their hollowness by means of domesticated niceties, arguments between parents over a violent incident involving children are best served with a glass of Scotch, and its wise not to leave an apartment in order to prove an ironic point. Adapted to the screen by Yasmina Reza, who wrote the original French play God of Carnage, the movie version riffs on these motifs repeatedly, pausing from time to time to indulge in conversations about cobbler pie, pharmaceutical companies, and awkward couple pet names. The movie features a stellar cast laboring hard to breathe life into something that no doubt plays much better on stage, and Polanski makes no effort at opening up the project cinematically. The entire thing takes place inside a cramped apartment, which is fine, but the problem is that though the film is clearly meant as a probing look into the facades of upper class New Yorkers, it rings false on nearly every level.

Obviously, the ping-pong dialogue is meant to be arch, but even with ace thespians like Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, and Christoph Waltz giving it their all, the characters come off hopelessly cartoonish. The plot concerns parents Michael and Penelope Longstreet (Reilly and Foster), whose kid is struck in the mouth by the son of Alan and Nancy Cowan (Waltz and Winslet). Meeting at the Longstreet’s posh apartment to discuss the matter, things begin amicably with the usual pleasantries and awkward placating as they decide on how to handle the situation. The point of the movie seems to be that the adults are just as primitive and juvenile as the children they are supposedly trying to protect, and as the discussions grow increasingly tense and booze begins flowing, their insecurities and rage boil to the surface.

This is all well and good, and it’s certainly refreshing to see a 79-minute chamber piece built around dialogue, but the incessant chatter is neither revelatory nor all that funny. The sight of Waltz’s glib pharmaceutical lawyer constantly answering his cell phone and ignoring the others is amusing at first, but the joke is beaten into the ground early on and then grows tiresome. Reilly’s hardware salesman, meanwhile, fits a bit too comfortably with the actor’s sensibilities to be all that interesting, and though Winslet has the film’s best moment involving the desecration of some prized art books, her character is that typical put-upon wife that will predictably come unglued once she gets alcohol in her bloodstream. Least successful of all is Foster, a tightly wound actress who gets a chance to play a misunderstood liberal that eventually comes apart at the seams. Rather than make her simmering disgust at the world believable, Foster gives a shrill performance that ratchets up to 11 and leaves no stones of overacting unturned.

Some will be quick to rush to the film’s defense, stating the phoniness of the characters are integral to understanding the sardonic thrust of the narrative, but Polanski films everything in such a matter of fact fashion that the construct feels even more artificial. Since the dialogue is not realistic and the arguments seem to drone on for no other reason than the movie would end if someone decided to shut up, Carnage must invent contrived ways to keep Alan and Nancy inside that apartment, and contrived is a perfect way to sum up the bulk of this would-be intellectual exercise in affluent white people guilt. Truthfully, peeling back layers of malicious self-righteousness underneath pleasant domestication has been done more intelligently before in films by directors like Todd Solondz (Happiness, Storytelling) and Neil Labute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors). Here, the pointed barbs about gender and social issues feel shoehorned, and maybe that’s the point. The film isn’t interested in solving any dilemma or offering any brave insights into human nature. It’s simply a trifle, a sporadically amusing but mostly plodding bore that thinks itself much cleverer than it truly is. This is really a shame, as the cast is undeniably talented and Polanski has made some certifiable masterpieces such as Chinatown and Repulsion, but Carnage is not among them. Instead of hanging on every word of self-aware dialogue, one only hopes in vain that Alan and Nancy would just leave that goddamn apartment.