Carnage

Yasmina Reza wrote the source play and (with the director) co-wrote the screenplay, but Carnage (nee God of Carnage) is a pure Polanski film. Its theme is the one that has defined Roman Polanski’s work from Knife in the Water, Cul de sac and The Fearless Vampire Killers on: the savagery that underlies our thin veneer of civilization -- and constantly threatens to erupt. As the lawyer (!) admits, “I believe in the god of carnage. The god whose rule’s been unchallenged since time immemorial.”

Before the drama begins, 11-year-old Zachary Cowan has hit classmate Ethan Longstreet in the face with a stick, ruining at least one tooth. But haven't we developed beyond the "tooth for a tooth"? Not here. Or there. Their parents have met to discuss the issue. Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael (John C. Reilly) Longstreet are liberals. She writes about ethnological art history and argues for human rights and justice, so she knows from savagery. He sells kitchen equipment so he knows domestica and cleanliness. Zachary’s parents are conservatives, Nancy (Kate Winslet) an investment broker and Alan (Christoph Waltz) a lawyer, here constantly taking cell phone calls to contain a scandal about the dangerous side effects of one of his client company’s pharmaceuticals. 

As the film opens the Cowans are leaving the Longstreets but are then drawn back in. They will continue to leave and return for the duration, establishing the inescapability of the root issue. You can move in and out of  social roles but the primeval grip will pull you back. The couples’ initial agreement disintegrates as their discussion extends. Then each marriage reveals its tensions. 

By film end each character has been exposed, each pretense to civilization destroyed. The good citizen Penelope turns aggressive, first verbally against the aggressive boy’s parents, then physically against her husband. Foster plays her as an arid, pinched attacker. Nancy is cooler but she (properly) resents her husband’s work obsession and under the strain (and perhaps Penelope’s proud fruit cobbler) vomits. Thus defiling Penelope’s rare Kokoschka catalogue dispels the notion that even classic Expressionist art can sublimate our radical wildness. 

The lawyer embodies the abuse of the law, as he immorally defends his dangerous client and blithely accepts that his son “is a savage.” He admits he has no trouble following his own baser impulses. The kitchenware salesman is the most sympathetic of the four, the character least invested in the pretensions of civilization. But in his ostensible cleanliness he abandons his daughter’s hamster to the Brooklyn jungle. His tendency to compromise only infuriates his supposedly justice-centered wife. Both marriages shivered, the characters realign themselves along gender lines, the cigar-smoking men against the cell-phone hating women. This realignment is another form of regression, preferring a martial sexual identity over their marital oaths.  

Zachary’s violence is revealed to have had an external cause. Ethan refused to let him into his gang and called him a snitch. On Broadway, James (aka Tony) Gandolfini had a spark to his memory of once having led a gang himself; that's missing in Reilly's line.  The whole drama is a kind of snitch, because it blows the whistle on our pretence to have outgrown savagery. By film end each parent has exceeded their children’s verbal violence and emotional abuse. The boys’ gang, of course, is a miniature of social organization, but it embodies the exclusion of some Other rather than some positive community. 

      In addition to this essential Polanski theme the director places his personal stamp on the film in two ways. First, he makes a cameo appearance as the frightened neighbor who opens the door to check on the hallway furore. This signature device cites the exemplar of transfer-of-guilt dramas, Alfred Hitchcock. As well, Polanski's cameo appearance represents a significant reduction from his earlier adoption of featured roles in his films. He appears just long enough to remind us he's in hiding.

Moreover, he significantly casts his son Elvis Polanski as Zachary, the lad whose impulsive violence triggers the action. In this casting the father visits his notoriety upon his son. Polanski adds to the play a frame behind the opening titles and closing credits where in long shot we see first the initial tussle and finally -- the boys’ natural reconciliation. The latter touch speaks volumes. It suggests that children left to themselves will work out their own differences. If their parents get involved their greater power will only worsen the situation, making it more dangerous. By further implication, Polanski suggests that kids get over their traumas, especially if left to their own desires and codes of conduct. Given that Polanski is still on the run for having skipped out on his trial for allegedly seducing a minor -- who, not incidentally, has publically forgiven him -- his adaptation of this play becomes especially personal. Polanski's closing note confirms the lasting power of men and their signature gadgets: the lawyer's drowned and dried cell phone rings again. You have heard the sound of one axe grinding.