In Which Violent Delights Abandon Violent Ends

Convincing Nihilism

by DAYNA EVANS

Carnage
dir. Roman Polanski
79 minutes

Carnage, Roman Polanski's latest, is seventy-nine minutes, features only four characters, is not a part of the Fast and the Furious franchise, and — worst of all — is an adaptation of a stage play. What kept me watching as I struggled with the desire to never have to see Jodie Foster’s face again was the possibility of a blooper reel of John C. Reilly clips at the end in which he happily goofs around. Yes, the individual performances of Carnage are convincing, and their interactions with each another feel natural, but sometimes I found myself asking, "Why does this movie exist?" And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

The film opens with a long shot of a scene of young boys arguing in a Brooklyn Bridge Park and an altercation between two boys in particular leads to one grabbing a large stick and whacking the other across the face with it. It looks painful because that stick was, like, really big. This is our expository opener from which the whole film moves forward. Cut to the glowing screen of a Mac, where Penelope Longstreet (Jodie Foster) narrates an insurance claim as she types, three adults standing behind her. Penelope is predictably wearing octagonal tortoise glasses and is a skilled typist.

From the minute she presses print and lets the claim stream out of the printer into her hand, we have now witnessed all of the action Carnage has to offer. Quietly, I prayed that at least Ethan Longstreet, her “mutilated” son, will show up to bear to us his totally gnarled face and incisors, for necessary gruesome effect. (He doesn't.)

Because there isn’t much else to the plot, and the scene is set within the same boringly obvious Brooklyn apartment, stylized with attention toward modern academic nuances and laden with postmodern art books, apple-pear crumble, and fresh tulips from the "florist on Henry Street," we are forced to focus on the ultimate devolvement of civility between four grown adults. Even the merest discord amounts to high drama for Polanski: when Penelope asks Nancy if she knows a florist, she stares blankly at her. The viewer bears witness to a conversation-cum-argument between the couples for the entirety of the movie, and despite the short length, what it provides is not in itself enough to be compelling.

Enjoying the tension of watching Carnage is about praying for things to get physical — the closest we come is when Penelope tosses Nancy's very expensive-looking purse into the air and Nancy shrieks, "She broke my makeup mirror! And my perfume bottle!" I found myself applauding their sons for at least having a little more gall to pursue resolution with violence instead of with ninny philosophical language and whining. Probably that is Carnage's entire point.

Despite its shortcomings — lack of plot, lack of realism, lack of purpose — there is a glowing light to Carnage that cannot be forgotten, and his name is John C. Reilly. Call me biased because of my love for Steve Brule and Stepbrothers' Dale Doback, but this man is like a blessed angel sent from heaven to shine all over Jodie Foster’s perpetually grapefruity face. While Penelope is busy screeching about her out-of-print Kokoschka book that Nancy has vomited all over, ("There is no other one; it’s a reprint from the catalog of the 1957 show in London"), Michael is busy just playing the role of refined, adult goofball. "Is cobbler cake or pie? Why should pizza be a pie?" he asks, as a means to lighten the conversation. An interesting question, Michael! Perhaps the film's screenwriter (the same as the play — Yasmina Reza) could have added some more thought on that conundrum.

Instead, the decision was made to erode even Reilly’s character into a moral absurdity that looks weirder on him than the maroon merino wool V-neck sweater that he’s wearing. We find out that he’s somewhat of a nihilist. Does a man who refers to vomiting as "tossing your cookies" make for a convincing nihilist? Not exactly. The poor guy is afraid to touch his son's hamster (as he abandons the animal in the street) out of a severe psychological fear of rodents. I mean, come on.

The other adults — Nancy, Penelope, and Alan — are all decently acted, as well, but none really have the bite in them that I was looking for. Penelope is a pitiful drunk who turns into a puddle of tears and belligerence after two sips of scotch, while Nancy becomes less buttoned-up and more of a loud-mouthed aggressor who throws around slurs like "faggot" when she’s feeling feisty. Christoph Waltz, brilliantly cast as Alan, is a sinister and rude attorney who has yet to learn table manners. And though his character acting is brilliant, his constant barking into a blackberry (product placement) only begs the question of why his wife, an investment broker, is not as busy. She has nothing to damned do except sit around and wait to stage reconciliations between adolescent boys. And why the hell is her hair pulled back so tight?

Carnage gets most of its mileage by repeatedly pointing out Brooklyn mothers have no sense of humor. Penelope even reminds us, "I don’t have a sense of humor and I don't want one." Or maybe it’s just all mothers in general who don’t know how to laugh at things that are funny. Michael and Alan get to be leaders of gangs and Ivanhoe disciples, a contrast that strikes me as a little unfair and a lot outdated. It's also impossible to believe that pearl-wearing, fresh linens, and patent-heeled Nancy is actually a Brooklyn mother. That cerulean Pashmina scarf has never seen the light below 57th street.

Watching the claustrophobic Carnage, I was entertained by the novelty of the performances, contained as they are in a small space. By the end, I started to dislike it and was, more than anything, irritated by its existence. This represents an unfamiliar kind of betrayal for me because I usually sit through every movie quietly disliking it from the get-go unless it’s full of explosions or it gives me an opportunity to admire the overt dullness of Paul Walker.

The film concludes with a dramatic gesture from Nancy, who pulls the Henry Street tulips from their vase and smashes them all over the recently vomit-covered coffee table as she lazily mutters, "This is the worst day of my life." The blackberry buzzes, the screen fades to black, and within seconds, it fades back to a little orange hamster sniffing happily in the grass outside in the big, bad world. And boy, do we feel for that hamster. Free from the caricatures of New York City parenthood, there are no bounds to what you can do, little guy. Run with it.

Dayna Evans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Bangladesh. You can find an archive of her writing on This Recording here. She tumbls here.

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The World According
to Tara

by ELEANOR MORROW

When I realized that Diablo Cody and John Irving were in fact the same person, I was not totally surprised.

Irving's 1981 epic The Hotel New Hampshire is probably his worst novel. The family dog is named Sorrow, two major characters die for no reason in an airplane crash, and the remaining ham-fisted symbolism is dull at best, insulting at worst. Like in all Irving, bad things are set up to happen and occur with astonishing regularity, especially the laziest of all plot devices: the accidental death. When Irving stops being able to imagine a future for his characters, or if he is bored at how happy they are, he invents another calamity.

Diablo Cody's Showtime series The United States of Tara, which has begun its second season and has already been renewed for a third, takes a similar tact. The worst is going to happen; the best of intentions is bound to end up costing you everything in the end. Although the show's first season was primarily about Tara (the absolutely magical Toni Collette) and the other personalities which inhabit her body, it has now become about her children, which is the introduction to every single fucking John Irving novel.

Two people come together to start a family in The Hotel New Hampshire, and it basically turns into a haunting version of Irving's sickest high school fantasies - with incest to spare! One of the daughters is raped; a black football player saves her. Someone dances around in a bear suit. Like in The United States of Tara, this union results into peripheral accidents, which Irving and Cody say is really the only way life unfolds.

In many ways these two diablos, both legendary for their command of invective, are actually puritanical celebrators of determinism. Everything is fate in Irving, and coincidence takes on the significance of a missive from God. Who can forget Garp's lonely battles with other people's foibles, the petty love of The Cider House Rules, the thinly-veiled super-gross autobiopic A Widow for One Year?

Mere attraction in Irving is accorded the same level of meaning as the deepest love. Sorrow isn't just another name for the family pet, it's the generalization Irving makes about the world.

Cody's show improves upon this by giving her characters some freedom, although we are still wary of the destructive friendships they might foster and the inevitable resulting pain. It is in fact an open debate on how much control anyone has of their own lives in The United States of Tara. Are Tara's disturbing drifts into other personalities not essentially representations of her true self? It is easy to see how Cody finds this appealing.

The show's incredible ensemble has taken what can only be called an important step forward by adding Joey Lauren Adams, in that Chasing Amy is basically what The United States of Tara is going for; bringing a cultural milieu that exists one place into another. This is a lot of drama for Kansas.

Tara's daughter Kate Gregson is played by Brie Larson, one more of the more exciting young talents in acting. (Diablo's advice for her is always, kind of like Ellen Page, but blonder.) This season, she has taken a job with a debt collection agency and every scene she's in is better than Mike Judge's entire career. Kate's job is the finest subplot in American television since George Costanza got engaged, and the best thing Steven Spielberg has ever been involved with.

Tara's son (Keir Gilchrist) is named Marshall, and he's basically the inverted Juno, except he dresses a lot better than she did. Marshall is ostensibly gay or questioning, and after experimenting with unrequited love last season, he's now prepared to explore all the possibilites. Like John Berry in The Hotel New Hampshire, Marshall harbors a strange love of his older sister, which is currently manifested in time spent with a brunette. He used a Ouija board to close, and it worked.

The quirky Kansas presented in The United States of Tara is basically New Hampshire if you think about it hard enough. There is another, saltier America forged from the intersections between its parts. All is exaggerated - the dangers of high school, Rosemarie DeWitt as Tara's sister Charmaine pining for marriage, the weird gay couple next door, Marshall's suave sexual confusion, the way that Tara loathes weakness in herself and others.

In their depictions of gender, Irving and Cody are polar opposites. Women in Cody's imagining are spheres of reciprocity and cultural innovation; they master their men and achieve intellectual superiority through force of mind. Diablo Cody does to what women what Irving, that former wrestler, was so keen to do with boys: make them short, Owen Meany-esque projectiles of enthusiasm, slowed as often as they speed forward into unknowing destruction. Each view of gender is profoundly sexist and aggrandizing, but the broadest of strokes is likely to leave some lasting impression.

Irving's Hollywood career was marked by several missteps; he can also easily be blamed for Tobey Maguire's career as a feckless ciderboy. There has never been a really good adaptation of Irving's books, because they are never-ending repositories of details which by their simple incoherence are expected to assemble together into a whining whole. Characters are neither funny or tragic enough because of the plaintive way they are portrayed.

When Irving wishes to shock or offend, he tries to push a button but never succeeds, like an eight-year old putting forth a dirty joke. Thus he prefers the simplest of dramatic acts over all else: surprise!

Innocence isn't innocence if you take the time to point out how naive it is. Tragedy deserves roughly the same amount of skepticism. The United States of Tara, probably the funniest show to air this season, may not be clear on the difference between the two yet. Tara is not a show about mental illness, it's about how disturbing and painful it is to feel normal, you know, like Diablo and John.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can read her previous work in these pages here.

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