Film Review: Carnage ***
The brutality of the park in the civility space
The varnish of so-called civilization is gradually eroding and the true personality of each one of them comes to the fore, either because of a splinter thrown or because of the introduction of alcohol into the discussion
When some violence between two 11-year-old boys called Zachary and Ethan erupts into real violence, Ethan loses two teeth. The parents of Zachary, Alan and Nancy Cowen (Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz), meet Ethan's parents, Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly), to try to soften things up. The four actors are perfect in their roles, and Polanski has been able to direct them in a way that neither of them necessarily stands out more than the other.
The film begins and ends with an open plan of the park where the boys beat each other, but it soon becomes clear that the "public square" is actually the living room of Michael and Penelope's flat, where the couples meet to solve what happened between their children, generating a new and offensively aggressive occurrence, where prejudices are revealed and disagreeing with the other's opinion can be discouraging. We may conclude that we can only accept that yes, we will have to live with different points of view and other words to describe the same story. We are at the same time invaders and witnesses of a civilized conversation that, during 80 minutes, degrades to a real verbal carnage as the title of the work already allows to glimpse.
Direction: Roman Polanski
Screenplay: Roman Polanski, Yasmina Reza and Michael Katims (translation)
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Christoph Waltz, Elvis Polanski, Eliot Berger
Duration: 80 min.
Year: 2012
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