Blistering and biting, Carnage is one of the best comedies of the past few years. Adapted from the famed Yasmina Reza play, whom co-wrote the film adaptation with director Roman Polanski, Carnage is quite the simple tale. Two married couples meet one evening to discuss a recent act of violence between their sons. Alan (Christoph Waltz) and Nancy’s (Kate Winslet) boy Zachary was the perpetrator of the act, smacking Michael (John C. Reilly) and Penelope’s (Jodie Foster) kid Ethan in the mouth, causing significant, though not life-threatening, damage. The four parents are all rather polite about the meeting. Alan and Nancy freely admit the act occurred, even offering to pay for the necessary surgery, while Michael and Penelope appear accepting of their apology.
It gets messy.
Penelope is a free-spirited, curious individual, sincerely interested in what led to the boys fighting. As such, every moment Alan and Nancy are about to leave, Penelope’s inquiries draw them back into their apartment, with subtle, and eventually not-so-subtle, theories and accusations lobbied about.
Taking place in real-time over seventy-nine minutes, Carnage crackles open, with four characters, including the married ones, bleeding out any semblance of civility and manners with each passing moment. Polanski confines his foursome into an apartment stuffed to the brim with books, knickknacks and vintage pieces of you-name-it. As has been one of the director’s specialties through his career, Polanski makes the confines of home part of the story. Just as Mia Farrow was stuck in his her New York City walls and Ewan McGregor was trapped within that mega-complex on the beach, so to are Winslet, Waltz, Reilly and Foster.
These lauded actors are all aces. Waltz is devilishly joyful as the couldn’t-be-bothered businessman. Winslet’s amusing as a woman taking every slight word to heart with bubbling incredulity. Reilly’s great, bewildered at all the fuss and boisterous over the revelation that his son might be in a gang. As for Foster, whom often awkwardly fits into comedies, she’s delightfully condescending from start to finish. They all bark back and forth sublimely, with whatever pair at the center of a conversation fitting like clockwork with the other.
With such a brief running time, Carnage’s tart dialogue refrains from growing tired. It’s a movie that sprints from beginning to end, with the precise amount of wit and character to make it to the finish line without missing a beat.
Carnage opens in select theatres in Seattle today.
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