REVIEW: Carnage

Carnage (2011): Dir. Roman Polanski. Written by: Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza, based on the play "God of Carnage" by Yasmina Reza. Starring: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly. Rated R (Language). Running time: 79 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

In Carnage, a new film directed by Roman Polanski and based on a play by Yasmina Reza, two couples meet in an apartment to discuss an incident involving their sons, Zachary and Ethan. Zachary hit Ethan with a stick in the playground and now Ethan needs surgery to replace two missing teeth. But there is no need for these four adults to get embroiled in their sons’ feud, they say. They’re bigger than that. Ethan’s parents (played by Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) invite Zachary’s (Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) over their apartment to have a civilized conversation about how to proceed. The central irony of Carnage is that the parents are no better than their children. Indeed, they may be much, much worse.

Over the course of their conversation, tensions escalate and their talk moves away from cordialities and into a heated debate that touches on their marriages, parenting styles and the specific handling of a situation involving a hamster. Mostly though, the couples verbally tear each other apart until everyone is thoroughly miserable.

This potentially tedious premise is actually a lot of fun thanks largely to the actors, who dig into the material with great zeal. The script, written by Mr. Polanski and Ms. Reza, sometimes labors too hard to keep its characters in one room long after any sane individual would have left. The couples’ discourse has an undeniably stagy quality but the skilled cast is able make the whole affair seem perfectly natural.

Penelope (Foster) and Michael (Reilly), the host couple, are middle class New Yorkers pushing toward the upper middle. Michael has a small business selling furniture supplies and Penelope is an intellectual currently working on a book about “the Darfur tragedy.” John C. Reilly is an absolute joy to watch in the role. He is the perfect picture of geniality and good humor in the face of social discomfort, dispensing pleasantries and lame jokes that mostly fall on deaf ears. As the afternoon wears on, Michael sheds his role as peacekeeper and we see him for the short-tempered, stubborn man he is. Penelope is a little less multidimensional and gets a tad shrill by the end but is convincingly portrayed by Ms. Foster.

Kate Winslet gets the more fun role as Nancy, a stuffy, uptight lawyer who shows her true colors after a few drinks. Her husband, Alan (Waltz), is also a lawyer. He works for a pharmaceutical company that is currently in the midst of media fallout surrounding a drug’s side effects. Alan was able to spare enough time in his schedule to meet with Penelope and Michael but is constantly on his phone conducting business calls. Ms. Winslet plays nicely off Christoph Waltz. Every time the incessant ringing of Alan’s phone interrupts the couples’ conversation, Nancy shoots daggers at him while her lips contradict her with a polite smile. Mr. Waltz is great fun too; Alan is the voice of reason in the group, though his wisdom often comes in the form of condescending, cynical remarks.

Throughout the film, allegiances shift from couple against couple, to a battle of the sexes, and back again. Michael and Alan find common ground in their stubbornly chauvinistic ideas of masculinity and marriage. That is, until Alan makes fun of Michael’s humble business and the war returns to one of social class.

Carnage is a brief film without much of a resolution. Once the two couples have sufficiently ripped each other to shreds, it ends. Roman Polanski and Yasmina Reza manage to keep things light by not making the audience complicit in the vengeful feud onscreen. We are afforded a comfortable seat from which we can laugh at the characters’ indecencies without worrying whether we would fare any better in their places. Before you know it, the movie is over and we have emerged unscathed and entertained from the preceding whirlwind of negativity and anger. Mr. Polanski and Ms. Reza’s approach ensures that Carnage is not a terribly illuminating film but it is an enjoyable one.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/22/12

Awards, Lists & Prestige: A Look at the Year-End Awards Craze and the Top 10 of 2010

Now mid-January, we find ourselves in the thick of movie awards season. The critics have published their Best of the Year lists, and just about every other weekend you can catch a glimpse of the Hollywood elite sipping on drinks and wearing their designers’ finest on any number of award broadcasts. But what are we supposed to take away from this frenzy? What does winning Best Picture mean? Or topping a Top 10 list? The cynic in me is tempted to dismiss it all. “There’s no way to determine an objective best film in a given year,” he says. And he’d be right to say so.

On the other hand, the realist in me (a close cousin to the cynic) understands that, for better or worse, the end of the year hubbub that builds up to the Academy Awards is an unavoidable part of the movie industry, so there’s no sense in bemoaning its existence. Despite what one might think seeing the annual onslaught of big-budget blockbuster hopefuls each summer, studios aren’t solely interested in box office receipts. Those glittering statuettes – whatever shape they may be – offer a chance to accumulate that other type of wealth (the non-monetary kind): prestige. The fight for prestige is not limited to studios either. Who wouldn’t want those three wondrous words (“Academy Award Winner”) attached to their name in trailers for the rest of their career?

The problem is that the winners are not always deserving of their new titles. Often, the Oscars generate a lot of (ultimately fleeting) enthusiasm around undeserving films and so the list of Best Picture winners becomes riddled with forgotten movies that, in their year, were deemed the best of the best. The Academy Awards are also painfully predictable. Nominations have yet to be announced, but I can already confidently say that The Social Network will win Best Picture.

Hold on a moment, though. The cynic in me is taking control again. Sure, the Academy Awards are a fallible cultural game that cannot accurately predict which films will be remembered 10, 20, or 50 years later, but they’re hardly worthless. They help to highlight movies that the general public might not have paid attention to otherwise.

A few weeks back, for example, I saw The King’s Speech at my local theater. The movie had been getting a lot of critical attention and the Oscar prognosticators had begun to beat their drums, so I was excited to see it. I wasn’t the only one either. The movie played to a sold-out theater and ended up being a crowd-pleaser. Exiting the theater around me as the credits rolled were excited moviegoers chatting about their favorite parts. Oscar buzz led us into the theater, but the film’s humor and heart sent us home, wanting to recommend it to a friend. The film overcame the daunting expectations that are placed on an Award Winning Film and was able to sway the many subjective opinions in its audience.

Which leads me to critics’ lists. Like the Academy Awards, they do not offer a definitive statement of the year’s best films, but instead provide insight into a critic’s personal tastes. Seeing which critics chose which films as their favorites says something that the blinding glitz and glamour of the red carpet cannot. Of course, a critic’s list can be just as susceptible to end-of-the-year hype as an awards show. In my own experience, I often look back at my choices for the year’s best and scratch my head. In 2007, I wrote that Juno was the year’s best, with No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Zodiac all taking a backseat to that cutesy-quirky romantic comedy. Three years later, Juno is still a funny movie, but each of those other films has appreciated better, rewarding multiple viewings in a way that Juno’s one-liners cannot.

Predicting which films will be remembered years from now can be a tricky thing. So with that limitation in mind, I craft my Top 10 of 2010 list. There were no movies this year that I found truly great in the four-star sense of the word (last year I saw at least four: The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, A Serious Man and Up in the Air), but there were still some very fine movies that may yet become great in time.

The numbered order is subjective almost to the point of arbitrariness, but when organizing the list, I kept in mind the following: To what degree was the film a wholly satisfying experience? How have these films appreciated in the short time since I left the theater (or ejected the DVD as the case may be)? Organizing the list in this way led to some surprising results for me, but I think the list is an honest one. What follows are the ten films that most affected me in their various ways.

10) True Grit

Of course a Coen Bros. western would be heavier on talking than shooting. The prolific writer/directors seem to be able to take their style in just about any direction they please, and their adaptation of the novel that also inspired the 1969 classic is a witty and often violent trip out West. Add a grumbling, drunken Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role and the promising young talent of Hailee Steinfeld and you have a very entertaining film.

9) The King’s Speech

Sometimes the best historical dramas are the ones with the narrowest focus. The King’s Speech centers on King George VI’s stammer in the burgeoning years of the Radio Age. This may not sound like much of a subject for a drama, but the story is a surprisingly touching and inspirational one. Colin Firth as the titular King and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist are thrill to watch play off each other too.

8) The Kids Are All Right

No other movie I saw this year has as keen an understanding of how people interact as The Kids Are All Right. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as lesbian mothers who struggle with their children’s desire to connect with their sperm donor father (Mark Ruffalo). This is wonderful comedy that occasionally flirts with melodrama but even then remains an honest a depiction of family dynamics. That the family is an unconventional one dampens none of its universality.

7) A Prophet

This fascinating French film follows a young man’s years in prison as he navigates the multicultural politics of organized crime on the inside. Though only a handful of scenes take place outside the prison walls, the film is as expansive and grand as a crime epic. Absorbing from beginning to end.

6) The Ghost Writer

A political thriller about a biographer (Ewan McGregor) who agrees to write the memoirs of former Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) after Lang’s former ghost writer mysteriously committed suicide. Director Roman Polanski hasn’t lost any of his knack for crafting great thrillers, and this one is one of the most rich and involving mysteries in recent years. It has a phenomenal ending too.

5) The Social Network

How much is fact and how much was made up? Does it matter? Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin take the story of Facebook’s creation and turn it into the stuff of Greek drama. Jesse Eisenberg is wonderful as the borderline misanthropic Mark Zuckerberg and is surrounded by a strong supporting cast. Often dark, sometimes funny, and always engrossing.

4) Inception

Christopher Nolan is a marvelous craftsman and he outdoes himself here. He builds, then solves his own puzzle, playing by the rules he invents for himself. The result is one of the most dazzling and inventive action movies since The Matrix. Like that earlier film, Inception toys with metaphysical ideas just long enough to hold you over until the action scenes, all of which are exceptional.

3) 127 Hours

Only Danny Boyle could take the true story of Aron Ralston, who was trapped in a rock crevice for over five days, and turn it into one of the most entertaining movies of the year. Despite the seeming physical limitations of Ralston’s story, Boyle’s film is a kinetic and exhilarating ride. 127 Hours has all the tension of an action movie and its protagonist doesn’t even move for most of the film. Credit must also be given to James Franco for carrying the film in a career-best performance.

2) Black Swan

The best horror movie in years. Darren Aronofsky’s tour de force about a ballerina losing her mind is an eerie, paranoid thriller with top-shelf performances from Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey and Vincent Cassel. There are a number of twists and turns along the way, but the movie wisely does not trap itself into any one version of reality. The movie exists within Nina’s mind, so the question of what is or isn’t real is irrelevant. To her, everything is real, and I’m only all too happy to get caught up in her surreal nightmare.

1) Toy Story 3

Each of the previous Toy Story movies followed a basic formula: The toys leave the house, have an adventure, and eventually find their way home. In between, we’re treated to some exceptionally clever gags and top-notch animation. The third film delivers all of this plus a pitch-perfect, heart-breaking coda. Rarely does a sequel work as hard as Toy Story 3 to thematically unite its predecessors, but Pixar rises to the occasion and ends a wonderful series in a wholly satisfying way. Not even the unnecessary 3D could bring this movie down.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/17/11