Distancing himself from the typical cinematic manipulations for which he is renowned with films such as The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby or even The Pianist, Polanski here mostly (and appropriately) hands over the reins of the storytelling duties to the actors and their script. Adapted by Polanski and Yasmina Reza from her play Le Dieu du Carnage, it tells the simple tale of two sets of parents (Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly & Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz) who meet up one afternoon to discuss the implications of a violent altercation involving their sons. Seemingly trapped in this endless discussion that always manages to endure just a little longer, tensions escalate to a point where all four ultimately rip each other to shreds with words of repressed contempt. While loyalties never last long among the members of the group, beginning with each couple's loyalty to each other, passing through a shift into a temporary gender alliance to finally culminate in a raucous state of everyone-for-themselves chaos, the one that does survive belongs to the absent characters around which this entire shit-storm revolves: the children.
Bared down to its bones, Carnage is a simple illustration of how once someone becomes a parent, the child's existence becomes the main object of attention, even it their absence. To paraphrase Michael Longstreet (Reilly), kids drain the life out of you and suck you dry. While obviously extreme in wording, the reality of its essence is partially acknowledged here. The influence of their actions drive the parents to the brink of insanity even when not dealing with them directly, dominating their lives on a daily basis. Furthermore, the two book-ending sequences in which we actually see the boys in question (one where the assault happens and the other showing them having supposedly made up) seem to suggest that this parental bickering is practically useless as kids will, in their own way, eventually deal with the problem themselves.
While the themes observed aren't necessarily fresh, the abundant amount of performing talent and unexpected narrative situations that are strangely easy to relate to make this a engaging portrait of domestic deterioration. In a way denouncing the possible self-aggrandizing dimensions of parenthood, the film shows how the pretext of child concern may sometimes mask true intentions of self-concern. Specific references to the children in question are relatively few and far between, even though they are the initial focus that brought all four together. The subject of conversation quickly shifts to the parents themselves. And then the scotch comes out...
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