Carnage
There were many reasons for me to watch this film. 314 mentioned it as a solid film, Loris had watched it and, most importantly, it’s based on a play with few characters (though the typical chamber play has two characters, so maybe “Carnage” could already be perceived as having a lot of characters). As you probably all know, I love chamber plays to pieces and “Carnage” ended up no different.
While the story in the film is set in New York, I knew that the original version was Yasmina Reza’s “Le Dieu du Carnage”. As a result, I couldn’t help but notice how incredibly French the film was. According to statistics, gender disparities are much higher in France than they are in the US. The film reminded me a lot about the book “Bringing up bébé” (perhaps the only non-fiction book I have read in forever), in which Druckman postulates that French women work much more in the household and take care more often of the children while at the same time being happier with their lives than American women. She claims they just happily settle into their low expectations in their husbands, uh… OK. “Carnage” lays these tendencies bare. Nowadays, why would anyone want to have children with a man who hates them as much as the men in the film? Other than these shockingly exaggerated male characters, I was especially in love with how the women were depicted. Every single time Jodie Foster’s character started crying, I wanted to laugh. “I know everything about the suffering in Africa!” was the best line in the whole film. (The second best line was said by Jodie Foster too: “My Kokoschka!” Hahaha.)
Other than that, I was in love with the character dynamics and how it switched from couple vs. couple to men vs. women to everybody against everybody really. It feels so realistic how screwed up relationships can be, how much people can hate each other and most importantly, how incredibly funny that is. I think I have read criticisms on how the film was dry, over the top and not particularly realistic. Well, I appreciated it that way and totally got into their heated arguments.
Finally, I thought it was a nice gesture that the hamster was alive and that the children made up. The more important question now is: Will Ethan and Zachary turn into their parents one day? Polanski managed to get four of the most talented character actors on screen, and together they did a fantastic job. I am so tempted to see the film again.