Starring: Christoph Waltz, Kate Winslet, John C. Reilly, Jodie Foster
Directed by: Roman Polański
Rating: ★★★☆☆
At first glance, the fight between two boys in Central Park shown in an opening long shot does not look like a casus belli. Unlike Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polański does not linger on the cruelty of children, which is here taken for granted in the morally corrupt universe of his films.
The camera stays back from the infantile fray and turns instead to the adult world as the parents of the brawling kids meet to discuss their offspring’s behaviour. The hosts are Michael (John C. Reilly) and Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) and the visitors Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan Cowan (Christoph Waltz).
The stage is set for an initially civilised conversation that descends into vicious verbal carnage. As in Luis Buñuel’s classic The Exterminating Angel (1962), the characters are mysteriously unable to leave the apartment, although nothing physical is holding them. It is the pressure cooker atmosphere and spiteful but brilliant dialogue that attracted Polański to Yasmina Reza’s 2006 play God of Carnage, on which this film is based. The quartet of actors delivers top-notch performances with Waltz confirming his creative flair using a grotesque repertoire made up of sudden chuckles and grunts.
Eventually, the four adults descend to the thuggish level of Polański’s juvenile short Rozbijemy Zabawę (Break Up the Dance, 1957). It is interesting to speculate on what Hitchcock might have made of Reza’s oeuvre.
Originally published by The Krakow Post on March 26, 2012