Carnage is an
interesting choice for director Roman Polanski. It’s been 25 years since his
last comedy, Pirates, and that was a
complete flop. He tends toward dramatic thrillers more than anything. Perhaps
after the recent troubles he’s had with his arrest in Switzerland and near
extradition back to the United States he needed some light-hearted fare to ease
the stress. In the French stage farce God
of Carnage by playwright Yasmina Reza, who co-wrote the screenplay with
Polanski, he found material for his next movie. Among the themes that tie his
movies together is an often nihilistic view of a Godless world. The personal
tragedies of his life may or may not have contributed to his being drawn to
such subject matter, but being stripped of his parents in the Holocaust and
losing his wife and unborn child to the murderous Manson family are events that
can hardly be ignored when evaluating his work. Though Carnage is a comedic farce, it retains some of the motifs we find
in his other work.
