World War III in the Living Room; How Polanski Humiliates Us with Four Chairs and a Hamster
Film Profile:
- Title: Carnage
- Director: Roman Polanski
- Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly
- Genre: Black Comedy, Drama
- Release Year: 2011
- Runtime: 80 Minutes
- Based on: The play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza
Roman Polanski has always been a master of creating horror and tension in confined spaces. If in his previous masterpieces like Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant, and Repulsion (known as his Apartment Trilogy), the walls seemed to close in on the characters creating metaphysical or psychological horror, in Carnage, the walls are merely observers of a more grounded and tangible horror: the “horror of socializing.” This film, a brilliant adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s play, begins with a simple premise: two boys fight in a park, and one hits the other with a stick. Now, their civilized, intellectual, and mature parents have gathered in a chic New York apartment to resolve the issue like civilized human beings. However, with exemplary skill and in less than 80 minutes, Polanski tears away this mask of civilization so violently that by the end, nothing remains but four primitive and stubborn humans. Without any excess and with a runtime shorter than the standard cinematic norm, the film delivers a great lesson in brevity and pacing; a time where not a single minute is wasted, and every second is a dagger to the body of middle-class morality.
The film’s biggest trump card is its quartet of actors, who perform harmoniously like a symphony orchestra. Jodie Foster, as Penelope, symbolizes the neurotic and pretentious intellectual whose humanitarian concerns crumble when faced with reality. Christoph Waltz, with his innate cynicism and coolness, turns the role of Alan into the film’s most fascinating character; a man who doesn’t pretend to be polite from the start and grates on everyone’s nerves with his constant work calls. Kate Winslet and John C. Reilly also beautifully traverse their character arcs from calmness to madness. By trapping these four individuals in a single room, Polanski creates an atmosphere reminiscent of classic courtroom dramas. One could say Carnage is a modern, satirical homage to the masterpiece ۱۲ Angry Men. If in that film, 12 men gathered in a hot room to save a life and establish justice through logic and reasoning, here two couples gather to destroy their own dignity and mock justice through irrationality and obstinacy. Both films use confinement to strip away human nature, but instead of hope, Polanski reveals the absurdity of human relationships.
The narrative structure is engineered to constantly toy with the audience’s mind. Alliances shift moment by moment; first, the couples are against each other, then the men against the women, and finally, everyone against everyone else. These constant rotations prevent the viewer from taking sides, forcing them to continually revise their judgments. A brilliant directorial touch by Polanski lies in the clever use of the opening and closing sequences. The film begins with a long shot of the children fighting in the park and ends with a nearly identical shot in the same park. Initially, the audience might wonder why this fight is shown, but the film’s ending provides a crushing answer to this question: in the final shot, we see that the children have made up and are playing together, while their parents are still back in the apartment fighting over absolutely nothing. This symmetry renders all the arguments and disputes of the past 80 minutes futile and meaningless, completing the bitter irony of the story. Carnage is a work that proves one does not need multiple locations or special effects to make a riveting film; sometimes a room, a precise script, and four powerful actors are enough to depict the most formidable of wars.
