Review: CARNAGE

Carnage is the latest film from Roman Polanski. It is set in New York and you may ask yourself: if he can’t enter the country, how can he get away with making a film which is set there? Well the answer is simple: it is based on a play and so takes place almost entirely in an apartment. And so while being set in NY it was in fact filmed in Paris.

Which is interesting due to the fact that the play was originally in French and set there before being translated to English, whence it was relocated to London before more changes were made to suit an American audience and it ended up set in Brookyln. In 2009 I was in New York and desperatly wanted to see the play due to stella reviews and the presence of both James Gandolfini and Jeff Daniels. I ended up missing it due lack of money or laziness. It is upon this Broadway version that the film is based.

The story revolves around two married couples. Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly play the parents of a boy who has been hit with a stick by the son of a couple played by Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz. The four of them meet and talk about the incident and hilarity ensues. I won’t go into much detail as to how their converstaion goes but it creates a lot of humour and drama. So as you can imgaine, there is not much plot. It is a character study and what a character study needs is good performances and a good script. The script is sharp and the four actors certainly deliver.

Jodie Foster is the best she has been in a long time as the neurotic mother of the injured boy. She is constently tense and awkward making her performance at times hard to watch, but this suits the character perfectly. John C.Reilly is magnificent and seriously funny as her husband, a “real working man” without much education. Christoph Waltz nearly steals the film with a pitch perfect performance. The humour and danger he brought to Inglourious Basterds is finally shown again, for it was certainly missing in his last three films – Water For Elepants, Green Hornet and The Three Musketeers. (Hopefully Tarantino gives him an equally memorable character in Django Unchained.) Kate Winslet gives the most theatrical performance of the quartet. This at times jars with the others but it she is still very watchable.

So the performances are all fantastic and as I said, this is a story all about characters, so the film is a joy – but there is a problem. It does not feel like a film. It comes across as exactly what it is; a play put on celeloid. To transfer any play to film succesfully it is essential to utalise the strenghts of the medium, otherwise what’s the point when you could see the play. A film which takes place in one location, should use the camera and editing to make it constanly new and exciting. Carnage does not do this. Basic shots of the action do tell the story competently but don’t make it feel worthy of a big screen. And Polanski is the director who made Repulsion, for God’s sake! A film which also takes place almost entirely in one apartment, and which through thrilling and inventive use of camera and editing makes the location come alive so that we never get bored with the locale.

Carnage is an extremly funny film with absolutly terrific performances, and a cracking script. It is just a shame that the visual style is not equally as arresting. Watching it I had a blast but I couldn’t help wishing that I had seen it on Broadway three years ago.

Rating: 4/5

Reviewer: Harry Davenport
Stars: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet , Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly
Director:Roman Polanski
DVD/BR Release: 03 February 2012 (UK&Ireland)