New York City, Bay Area Playground, one guy cuts his lip and knocks out two teeth to another. Parents, conventionally civilized people, decide to discuss the problem in a conventionally civilized manner – in a comfortable home environment, without the involvement of higher authorities (despite the fact that one of the parents is a lawyer). The action takes place in the house of the injured party. This is how Roman Polanski's new movie begins.
Beginning of adaptation of Yasmina Reza's French play God of Carnage takes place in a rather peaceful atmosphere – the heroes behave with restraint, trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to choose words, so as not to shake up something superfluous. Everyone is emphatically polite, and the heroine Foster tirelessly reminds everyone who has gathered almost every minute that they are all – representatives of the modern world, and therefore it is necessary to deal with the problem culturally.
However, the God of Slaughter does not sleep. The movie is only eighty minutes long, Polanski shot it in such a way that it seems – no more than half an hour, but this time is enough for the heroes to sincerely, from the bottom of their hearts, hate each other. Not one couple another, but each other.
In the course of overly soulful polylogues, the problems of upbringing fade into the background, despite all the efforts of the characters, yielding to more global problems, such as: racism, political correctness, sexism, reasonable egoism. But it passes so quickly and unnoticed that it seems that Polanski is elementary mocking, if not at the heroes themselves, then at the pompous, even unconscious pathos of their speeches. And it's funny.
And this is no less funny than the behavior of the characters themselves. Actually, the main thing in the movie is – it is the possibility of degradation of a civilized person even in conditions far from the critical level of threat to health or material condition. In seemingly everyday disputes, at first glance, respectable citizens do not hesitate to show their primitive essence. People who are strangers to each other become almost relatives only in order to express everything they think about their neighbor, whom, it seems, is supposed to be loved according to all the canons.
However, the initial confrontation between parental couples smoothly flows into gender confrontation, so that the `` war of the four walls '' is undergoing changes in the balance of power; there is no more pair against pair, now there are women against men (or men against women, subtleties matter here). And if before that you could still feel like a demiurge, impartially watching from your place the tragicomedy of two tiny grains of sand of a human beach, then when former enemies stand on the same side of the sexual barricades, it will not work out to be objective or at least simply indifferent.
All this is accompanied by purely intra-family quarrels, eighteen-year-old whiskey, luxurious music by Alexander Desplat and, of course, excellent acting. One can only wonder how accurate the casting was: the actors were just perfect, and it seems that other faces in these images would look out of place.
As a representative of the strong half of humanity, I'll start with men. Perhaps the most charming hero of the Mad Four is Christoph Waltz. He is also the most calm and balanced (up to a certain point, and after that too). He also manages to be the most annoying at times, thanks to his cell phone. Shameless conversations in the middle of conversations can infuriate not only the characters. But, in addition, he is also the most convincing, and his reasoning is far more logical (and more caustic) than all the others, playing the role of a kind of lever that in time lowers the degree of hatred soaring in the apartment. And all this is done with a `` how-you-all-got-me-all-me '' expression on the face, which, in the course of the action, transforms into a more specific `` what-you-all-idiots ''. Waltz turns all this into a whole science.
The hero of John S. Reilly was no less remarkable. A kind of conformist with approaching the boundaries of his `` I '' midlife crisis, which naturally affects the character and actions of the hero himself. The poor fellow spent the longest time trying to smooth out the most acute corners of the conflict, which no less naturally resulted in the most violent personal position (oh yes, despite his seemingly opportunistic character at first).
The heroine Jodie Foster has also turned out to be bright, whose mask and true essence differ like no other. Homegrown mother Teresa of the American Spill is capable of evoking only three emotions in the viewer: an indulgently sympathetic laugh, evil laughter and laughter. But how powerful these feelings are! All this contributes to a large extent to the characteristics given to the heroine Foster by the hero of Waltz – caustic, but well-aimed.
And, despite the vomiting and facial expression, in anger not yielding to Penelope's, Kate Winslet's character is attractive in her own way. In the picture, she creates rather funny contrasts – from the combination of a strictly suit with a lax digestion and to the divergence of one own point of view from another, which, however, can be attributed to a mask that was torn off in time.
Despite all the tragedy of what is happening, the demonstration of the decline of morals in a single monastery, it all looks ridiculous. Polanski manages to make the viewer laugh at something that in real life he doesn't even want to sneer at. After all, even when strangers are swearing nearby, say, on the street, the smile on your face can be frankly strained at the most. It's really fun here to watch the reflection of your own essence brought to a boiling point. Which of the people was not angry, which of the people did not freak out? If only we could see how, in fact, it all looks ridiculous from the outside. And the God of slaughter, meanwhile, never sleeps. And at any moment he will gladly rip off the mask from anyone who dares to go against him.
The Topic of Article: Review of the movie Massacre. Down with the masks!.
Author: Jake Pinkman |
