For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - Carnage
The Impression:
Roman Polanski films deep-dark comedy about our
relationships with each other through the eyes of the
horribly rich! I’m in.
The Reality:
Yazmin Reza has, in my limited experience, become the
chronicler of how fucking awful rich people can be. Roman
Polanski is one of the great directors of our time (though
The Ghost Writer certainly isn’t a showcase for that)
and his ability to expose the oddities of any mundane
subject are as good if not the best of anyone working today.
The story of two couples trapped in a self-created purgatory
of emotional battling is exhausting. Carnage is the
story of two couples (Jodie Foster and John C. Reily and
Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet) who meet to discuss an
incident involving one child’s stick-whipping of another
child. The incident is just a catalyst though for the two
couples to pick each other apart and in picking each other
apart show the horrible, horrible nature of every human
being ever. The film, based on Yazmin Reza’s play The God
of Carnage is forced in to the tight confines of a stage
but Polanski doesn’t let it restrict him, he uses the space
to force the feeling of claustrophobia on the viewer. These
people are awful (even if you like one of them more than any
other, I can promise you by the end of the film, you’ll
despise them and everything they stand for equally) and
Polanski wants to make sure that it feels impossible to flee
their terrible natures. I certainly did. Any moment of
levity Polanski allowed I gulped up like oxygen, desperate
to find space outside of the box of emotional horrors these
talented actors create.
The Lesson:
Rich people are terrible. But c’mon, you already knew that.
- Noah Sanders
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