With a title like "Carnage" and a director like Roman Polanski, I thought I was in for some serious blood sport---although the audience I saw this with earlier this year obviously knew they were coming for a good chuckle ... so they brought their popcorn and howled at everything.
And with good reason. There's quick humor everywhere. Penelope wants to maintain a certain social distance, though she's invited the Cowans into her home and hubby Michael likes to talk; she's displeased with him blurting out personal information. While showing Alan the bathroom, she's embarrassed he's glimpsing their intimate life. She quickly straightens the bed, hides a box of tampons under the sink, picks up a pair of panties (?) from the floor, throws some tissues in the wastebasket. Although when she returns to get some of Michael's (unused) cologne, she obviously has no problem barging in on him, standing there in his underwear blow drying his slacks dry.
In the living room, when Michael holds out a towel for Nancy to wipe her face, Penelope takes it to wipe off her art books---clearly expressing more distress at her ruined coffee table books, than her disfigured son---Nancy (with expert timing) nonchalantly snatches back from her. Both men are suddenly perk up and are proud of their progeny when the word "gang" is mentioned. Penelope and Nancy bond over a couple of Bacon paintings.
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"I wuz playing in the park"
There's also constant parallels between the innocent horse play of children that occasionally leaves someone hurt and crying with their own mistakes of impropriety---that by their own reckoning---even a child would know better, and yet as mature adults, they just as hapless making these same errors of judgement.
Each character are each given a kind of fetish object. Penelope and her art books, connecting her to civilization. Michael and his top drawer scotch, his treat for a hard day's work. Nancy and her designer purse which she uses to accentuate her great beauty and Alan with his power phone.
Although a stage play, this is not a huis clos. For instance: a camera follows Penelope as she leads Alan through their apartment to a bathroom, which firmly anchors the living room within a larger living space. The Cowans can leave at any time and they even manage to get to the hallway elevator twice, which establishes the apartment within a building. The windows are open to outside world with a view of the passing EL. Polanski has opened it up enough to avoid it becoming claustrophobic. The mirror in the front foyer also deepens the space. It also creates as tension as I would unconsciously look for the camera crew in certain shots. My only quibble would be the obvious placement of the television in the corner of the room, it's large reflective surface would have been problematic otherwise. I also thought the lighting was really great.
The vase of the yellow tulips dominates the living room (notice the tulip shaped lightning fixtures in the dining room) At the outset, Penelope seems to be nonchalant about the bouquet and a certain flower shop, though later on, Michael blurts out that he was sent out expressly at the crack of dawn to fetch them, so this is a deliberate ruse on her part to appear more cultured. It's also telling in the final scene of the film, Nancy trashes this deliberate effort on Penelope's part.
At the outset, there are two distinct couples, though gradually through the interactions the loyalties sift around. There's friction in both marriages. They all express childish vanity for being right while all around them were in the wrong and the casual martyrdom that comes with being superior to everyone else ... "This was the worst day of my life"
They seem to know the forms of social interaction of their privileged world, though in practice they're a little rusty. There's a nice idea they have to be implicated in their children's life and put their symbolic stamp of approval on everything, because obviously so much of it is out of their control. But there's a great comfort that comes with working the percentages: safer playgrounds; the correct toys; better schools; associating with the right kind of people; living in the right part of town; mingling with the right kind of society and following proper social etiquette.
At the bottom of all this, is the very privileged idea that one can manage the randomness and chaos of life. But chaos is a funny thing; if Zachary was only an inch farther away when he swung the stick, it would have left only a scratch or a mild bruise on Ethan's face. And the whole incident becomes a non event.
There's a nice counter point between their discussion and Alan's work. He's a corporate fixer, anything that could affect the earning potential of his pharmaceutical corporation is mircomanaged away. A report linking one of their drugs to fatal side effects has just surfaced and he's quietly working the problem. This is his typical day at the office and he's quietly framing it to death.
Alan and Nancy are more affluent. They both work at high paying jobs; while Penelope seems to be a stay at home mom and Michael is a door to door salesman. This balance of power is briefly alluded to, Alan and Nancy being more wealthy (the God of carnage favors the rich) If Michael and Penelope wanted to get litigious, Alan could knock their teeth out with one rap of his knuckles.
As a work of a cinema, I think this story needed a bigger ending. The film ends not with a bang, but with a whimper when Nancy takes out the flowers and flings them around the room. I also think another character would have added a little more imbalance and tension to the proceedings---with four characters, they always tend to divide nicely into two even groups.
Q: Accountability skills? Can one learn empathy?
Q: Why wasn't this the worst day of Michael's life?
Q: Is this the first film where Kate Winslet has burped onscreen?
Q: When the blueberry goes into the flower vase, was that simple product placement or an actual commercial showing it's remarkable water resistance capabilities?
Q: Who was the old lady in the hallway who peeked from behind her door? What did she mutter?
Q: Would you name your child Elvis?
The film Screenplay is here:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/awards-information/screenplays/carnage_screenplay.pdf
Even without reading the original stage play I can guarantee Christopher Hampton's English translation will be superior to anything Polanski and Reza cooked up a couple of weeks in Paris.
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I'll echo lines' idea that it needed a bigger ending. There are lots of possibilities here; even something truly extreme, like one character killing another, or hitting them in the mouth with some adult-version of a stick. That might have been heavy-handed, but nothing about this film was especially subtle, so I'd have preferred it degenerate into a more obvious farce to put an exclamation point on all those many, many sentences.
