Director Roman Polanski has always been good at ratcheting up pressure with compression - everything happening on a yacht in Knife in the Water, say, or in an apartment in Rosemary's Baby or The Tenant. There's a world out there that the camera could show us, and won't. On stage, given the exigencies of theatrical production, where sets and additional actors cost money, this minimal approach qualifies as naturalism on screen it feels artificially constricted. Here, the lightness of Reza's script is heightened by the casting of such powerhouse actors, then amplified by the fact that theatrical unities are still being observed: one plot arc, one locale, one day. It served as an acceptable place to watch stars (initially James Gandolfini, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and Marcia Gay Harden) behaving badly, at least until you could find a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? somewhere to pass the time more profitably. On Broadway, Yasmina Reza's play was called God of Carnage and was widely regarded as at once efficient - four characters, one set, 90 minutes - and lightweight. The thing is, every time you decide you've got a handle on who's what and how that must've influenced the boys, the script throws you a curve. Maybe he is a maniac, swinging sticks at innocent kids. "Accountability skills?" bristles the corporate lawyer, and soon there's a mini-explosion.Īha, you think, so that's where Zachary gets his temper. "If Zachary hasn't acquired accountability skills," she demurs, "they'll just glare at each other." Which is what investment-banker mom soon proposes, only to be met with passive resistance from liberal-writer mom. As someone says at one point, "We're all decent people." If only the kids could get along so well. The opening scene is made up of quibbles: The one boy approached the other "armed with a stick," writes liberal-writer mom. That things won't stay civil for long is intimated in the title, so. The attack is seen from afar, under the opening credits, after which the parents (all played by folks who've either won Oscars or been nominated for them, let's note) take over. The boy who does the hurting springs from the loins of an assertive power couple - investment banker Nancy (Kate Winslet) and corporate lawyer Alan (Christoph Waltz). The setup is also perfectly stereotyped: The boy who was hurt has pacifist, liberal, art-loving parents - nonfiction writer Penelope (Jodie Foster) and blue-collar wholesaler Michael (John C.
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The setup in Carnage is perfectly civilized: Two well-heeled Brooklyn couples discussing, calmly and rationally, the uncivilized behavior of their 11-year-old sons, one of whom has struck the other with a stick in a public park.