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Rating: Among the most commonly used words in everyday language, there are few clusters of vowels and consonants, perhaps "Ciao", "Buongiorno", and polite forms, that can compete for the coveted top spot with "Vaffanculo", "Cazzo", "Merda", and all the various more or less coarse stepsiblings. These rather inelegant expressions, so well known in the realm of friends, the four walls of home, or more generally in the so-called intimate sphere, can very rarely come to light. Along with sudden mood swings and obsessions that can reflect our true way of being, they are indeed part of a dark world that cannot, should not, appear in daily contact with strangers.
The result is that a considerable number of grains of sand in our personal hourglass are spent playing chess, carefully calibrating words, gestures, and behaviors: false to the core, we often smile silently when behind that veneer is nothing but a great desire, an almost irresistible urge, to explicitly tell the other to go fuck themselves. Preferably while looking them straight in the eye. And so on for another thousand situations, whose true aims are stifled by etiquette, by the education that regulates how we interact with people with whom we come into contact, whether we like it or not.
Carnage
We are in New York, and two adult couples, seemingly civil and balanced, are reluctantly brought together due to a fight involving their respective children. The incisors of the first young one were spectacularly knocked out by a stick masterfully wielded by the second. Shot in a single setting, this film, a transposition of a theatrical work, succeeds in depicting very well what I attempted to outline at the beginning.
It's a meeting of pure etiquette between two couples who, although they do not like each other in the slightest, must try to maintain a behavioral balance made of nonsense, false compliments, pleasantries, and god knows what else; situations we know all too well since our daily life is often full of them. Thanks to the fiction of cinema, and here lies the genius paradox, the initial balance is irrevocably shattered to gradually give way to the true way of presenting oneself, the personal worldview, of each of the four characters.
One after another, they will burst like balloons in contact with a needle. They will find themselves "naked", in the sense of defenseless, trying to gather the priorities of their comfortable existences: the handbag with beauty products, the cell phone with million-dollar contacts, the books stained with rich and dense vomit.
On points, the winning couple is Kate Winslet & Christoph Waltz, an excellent duo perhaps worthy of a statuette, over an indomitable Jodie Foster and a chameleon-like John C. Reilly. Polanski directs them in the right way, enhancing their talent, for an original film that I appreciated for its short duration, the icy humor that permeates it, and the cynical message it sends. I consider it a satisfying viewing, validated by a performance that is decidedly above average.
A must-watch. And for once "cazzo", "merda", and "vaffanculo"!
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Other reviews
By simakiku86
We laugh, and we laugh a lot too. But they are bitter laughs, laughs that make us understand how sometimes we manage to joke about those things that political correctness forces us to keep silent.
Polanski destroys every convention and throws four human beings into a vicious circle that starts as excessively democratic and steeped in fair play but is soon destroyed and overturned.
By Stanlio
Once again Roman shows us that appearances can be deceiving, and behind people’s facades, there’s always something else waiting to surface.
I had a lot of fun while I thought it might be somewhat heavy.
