Carnage (7/10)

January 9th, 2011

The most gratifying thing about Carnage, Roman Polanski’s new comedy play, is that in 2012 we still have room for a comedy of manners at all. Social barriers have been razed almost to the ground over the years, with niceties abandoned for plain speaking and a lack of empathy – I blame internet forums, myself – so it’s nice to see someone can still entertain by presenting us with the completely avoidable, but rather funny, deterioration of a perfectly sociable meeting between two sets of parents.

Clocking in at a rather brisk 75 minutes, Carnage is located entirely in the New York apartment of Penelope and Michael (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly), as they discuss the matter of their boy’s assault by a kid in his class. Nancy and Alan (Kate Winslet and, the movie’s star turn Christopher Waltz), the parents of said boy, look on as Penelope types the summation letter. ‘So, armed with a stick’, Foster begins. ‘Wait’, says Alan. ‘Armed?’

The four retire to the dining room to complete the social niceties we’ve all had the pleasure of performing, and it is here that Polanski (from a play by Yasmina Reza, who helped with the screenplay) further introduces the characteristics of the four, their quirks and oddities so normal in modern life but serving here only as ammunition for later discharging. Alan is a lawyer. He is also glued to his phone, stopping conversations mid-speech to talk to someone who therefore must be more important than the person to whom he’s currently conversing. Damn, I hate that. Michael, meanwhile, is the arbitrator of the group, always preferring to agree with the other side, whoever that side may be, in order to keep the piece.

Penny is, I guess, the main character here primarily because she’s played by Jodie Foster, who doesn’t do shrinking violet. Her character is ultra-PC, earnest in her endeavours to tell the world about its problems, a self-improver, and a character with total belief in herself. ‘I saw your friend Jane Fonda earlier’, Alan sneers. Winslet’s trophy-wife character Nancy is perhaps the hardest to define, save for the fact that she can’t hold her liquor, nor her cobbler.

Of course, when you only intend to be in the other couple’s company for ten minutes, you don’t comment on these things. If, however, the meeting drags on for longer, and good, strong Scotch whisky is introduced, well...what’s the harm in pointing out someone’s idiosyncrasies? Besides, they’re pointing out yours; might as well get your shots in too. You can see where this is going. The invisible shields the couple put up, as we all do – mostly to save the people we’re talking to, rather than ourselves – begin to crumble like the first drops of water through a waterbank, and you know what that means. Pretty soon the whole damn dam’s coming down.

It might be a good thing that Carnage only runs to 75 minutes, actually. Were there to have been another ten we might have seen Reilly roll up his sleeves and suggest that ‘we resolve this the old-fashioned way’ as the camera pans to the sight of a spinning Winslet desperately trying to get rid of Foster piggy-backing on her, pulling hair out by the clumpful. Thankfully this is not the case. Polanski’s eyes are twinkling here, and his bemusement towards social behaviour makes the movie a fun watch. The four begin as two couples but this isn’t a game of mixed tennis, despite the clearly-defined team uniforms the pairs wear. Sides reform, re-emerge and divide at will, depending on who’s saying what and to whom. It’s a lightweight affair, no doubt, and couldn’t possibly rank anywhere near any of Polanski’s essentials, but (much like Mamet’s The Winslow Boy, which I was reminded of) it is a joy to watch and to mark as a definition of an era’s social behaviour.