From 10 Feb
Oscar winner Roman Polanski’s riotous black comedy is all about bad manners and miscommunication, where you least expect to find them! The opening credits show an incident in a New York park where one child strikes another following a quarrel. Emotional mayhem – carnage – ensues! In the aftermath of the fight the two sets of upper middle-class parents meet to discuss how to handle it. They conclude that little Ethan must apologise to little Zachary, but as the couples engage in polite conversation it quickly becomes apparent that they are not quite on the same page. Initially cordial and civilised, the meeting quickly escalates into an emotional brawl with hosts Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael Longstreet (John C Reilly) rubbing Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan Cowan (Christopher Waltz) up the wrong way. In the course of a brief 80 minutes, this beautifully fluent 4-hander sees lines drawn, with affinities established and then shattered. It is fearsomely funny, ferociously well acted stuff from a director on top of his game. It also provides a rare showcase for all 4 actors. So far Winslet is the winner in the prize stakes, having just won a Golden Globe for her performance and with an Oscar nomination in hand.
Carnage is also a fruitful collaboration between Polanski and French playwright Yasmina Reza, who made her name with the play “Art”, a similarly iconoclastic look at the pretensions of the middle classes. The play “Carnage” has had successful runs in Paris, London and New York, in each case being adapted to reflect the different sitings. In the case of the film, the New York setting was recreated in a sound stage outside of Paris because of Mr Polanski’s outstanding charge for rape of a minor in the US. A bit of a Lord of Misrule himself, he obviously brought his own experiences of “carnage” to bear here!
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