Carnage: Cuddly Not Cruel

By Victoria Looseleaf

Virginia Woolf – as in Liz Taylor and Richard Burton‘s Who’s Afraid Of – it ain’t. We loved Yasmina Reza’s play, God of Carnage (click here for our coverage, including our KUSC interviews with Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis, who played the late Harvey Pekar‘s wife, Joyce Brabner in American Splendor; click here to read our L.A. Times remembrances of Harvey).

One reason for its success was that the four-actors-in-a-room stage scenario were so in synch it was like listening to a Bach fugue or a late Beethoven string quartet. We also dug the smart writing! But let’s face it, this comedy of ill manners, mordant and hilarious as it is in the theater, doesn’t become anything more when filmed, even if it’s done with panache by the one and only Roman Polanski (Repulsion, Knife in the Water, Chinatown, etc., and seen above in jovial mode, carried by the cast of Carnage).

In fact, it becomes less.

Here’s the skinny: Two married couples meet to sort out a playground fight between their 11-year old sons. The premise is simple enough – and so is the execution. The question is why a film and why Polanski? For one thing, he’s friends with playwright Reza. For another, he has a neo-gothic way with psychologically confining spaces/apartments (hello, Rosemary’s Baby, with Mia Farrow, above).

It’s also true that some of the greatest plays do become great films: The above mentioned Pulitzer Prize winning Edward Albee/Taylor/Burton Woolf flick (directed by Mike Nichols in 1966,  it was his first film outing); nearly anything by Tennessee Williams (with special kudos to Streetcar Named Desire, starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, left); while even some very good plays transfer well to the cinematic medium, such as John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation, John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, and…well, we’re momentarily in brain freeze, so back to the toothless film that is now Carnage.

Surprisingly, the quartet of onscreen helicopter parents has one very sour note: Jodie Foster’s shrieking, histrionic Penelope. Unfortunately, the two-time Oscar winner is not aging well (at least not under Pawel Edelman’s photography), and after seeing Harden’s Tony-award winning portrayal of the bleeding-heart-Francis Bacon-loving frustrated writer (dubbed Veronica in the play), albeit one with a silky voice even when screaming and beating up on her hubby (onstage’s James Gandolfini), Foster strikes out.

And for some reason, Foster’s character, instead of making a to-die-for clafoutis (seen and eaten in the play), has now baked a boring cobbler. Small stuff, but clafoutis sounds funnier, and it’s a pastry Roman must know, being married to a French femme and all. (At left, the playwright in Venice for Carnage‘s opening in August. Not a bad life!)

As for the rest of the cast it’s quite up to thespian snuff. Kate Winslet, a type A investment broker, can vomit with the best of them, John C. Reilly is a requisitely shlubby salesman type, and Christoph Waltz, well, he can do no wrong. What took Hollywood so long to make use of this Academy Award-winning actor? (We loved his Nazi Col. Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.) Waltz, constantly on his cell phone as a corporate attorney barking out instructions to simpering clients, looks swell and, with his rich, authoritative voice, also has impeccable delivery. And talk about his American accent – like Winslet’s – it’s note-perfect. Face it: The guy’s got gravitas, even when tossing off some of the film’s funniest lines and blow-drying his barfed-on pants (above).

A mere 80 minutes (the play was 90), Carnage seems like an exercise in confinement without a big payoff. Has Polanski, in his dotage (he’s now 78), become too cuddly? We don’t know what’s next for him (no trip to the States, that’s for sure), but do hope that he returns to form in the near future.

In the interim, Carnage will work just fine on your flat-screens – especially if you haven’t seen the play. But bring your own clafoutis!