The parent trap | 4 February 2012

Carnage is Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Yasmina Reza’s hit stage play The God of Carnage, in which two sets of parents get together to discuss an altercation between their 11-year-old sons in the hope that they can figure it out sensibly, and all hell breaks loose.

I have my reservations. I’m not convinced the play was exactly begging to be filmed, particularly as Polanski doesn’t open it up and keeps it, more or less, to one suffocating room and hallway, and I’m not convinced it’s particularly deep or insightful, but there is some enjoyment to be had from watching four actors at the top of their game get to where they do get to, even though it’s not much of any place. Plus, most deliciously, it comes in at a marvellously brisk 76 minutes; so if you have nothing better to do, as I haven’t, you won’t be kept from not doing it for terribly long. You’ll be back home frittering time away on the internet or picking fluff from your keyboard with a pin in no time. (My ball of fluff is the size of a ping-pong ball now.)

The film opens with a brief, dialogue-free prologue where, in the distance, we see two young boys in a park shoving and pushing until one hits the other in the face with a stick. (One of these boys, I note later when the credits roll, is played by ‘Elvis Polanski’, which is going to be something to live up to.) The film then switches to a Brooklyn apartment where the parents of the injured party, Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly), have invited over the parents of the perpetrator, Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz), to talk about the situation.