Skip to main content
Close

Carnage: 2011 AFI Film Fest

By Ryan Mason · November 7, 2011

Packed into iconic Chinese Theater on a Saturday night at AFI Fest 2011 to see Roman Polanski’s latest film Carnage, with nearly everyone dressed to the nines and cordial ushers helping everyone to their designated seats, it felt like we were settling in to watch a Broadway performance rather than a film. And once the reels rolled, that feeling didn’t change a whole lot as Carnage, based on the highly successful play “God of Carnage,” certainly comes off as far more theatrical than cinematic.

That’s not to say that it’s not a good movie in its own right. Polanski does a solid job of making the most of the space, which basically is just one room: the living room of Penelope and Michael Longstreet, played by Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly, respectively. Polanski uses the different sections of the room – the window area, the couches, the china cabinet, the foyer, a wall mirror — to create spaces of varying energy and purpose, alternating between wide shots and close-ups, to keep the film visually engaging. While it does feel like a play, that falls more on the dialogue rather than the camera.

And what dialogue it is. Talk about snappy and hilarious. Polanski penned the adaptation with the play’s original writer, Yasmina Reza, and together they craft one of the funniest movies of 2011. In a year where the R-rated comedy saw a massive resurgence at the American box office with flicks like Horrible Bosses, The Change Up, and The Hangover II, they’re all topped in number of laughs with Carnage, which provides more yuks than those previous three combined. And while it definitely has more social commentary than those others, Carnage is not without its share of blue, bathroom humor – one of the funnier moments involves projectile vomit.

Carnage provides a completely new cast from the popular Broadway run that starred Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini, and Marcia Gay Harden. In Polanski’s version, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz join Foster and Reilly, and they’re all superb. You’d expect Reilly to garner a bunch of laughs after transitioning from dramatic fare like Hard Eight and Magnolia to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Step Brothers. But, the other three induce plenty of their own as well, especially Waltz, who plays Alan Cowen, a high-powered attorney who’s close relationship with his Blackberry makes for a number of hilarious moments.

My only major problem with the film was with Jodie Foster’s performance. She starts off absolutely spectacular as the smug, judgmental Penelope, making you cringe with just how fake she’s being despite understanding her position as the mother of a child who was hit in the face by the Cowens’ son. But, for some reason, Polanski allows her to ratchet it up to 11 too soon, changing her abrasive character from funny to irritating. For the final ten minutes, it seems as if Foster is trying to take it one more notch higher, but she has nowhere else to go emotionally because she’d already hit the ceiling a few minutes before. It’s like hearing a high-pitched note in a guitar solo that forces you to cringe as your ears recoil at the frequency, and then having that note sustained well past the duration limit for pleasure.

But, it’s merely a minor detraction on an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable and hilarious film – even if it feels more theatrical than cinematic.