Monday, October 1, 2012

What I Watched -- Carnage

Wowzers, this movie is painful to watch.  In it, two sets of spouses meet to discuss an altercation between their sons - one hit the other in the face with a stick.  The parents begin in an awkwardly uncomfortable but civil meeting which develops into a festival of accusations, name-calling, and hurt feelings.  It's all a brilliant parallel to the fight between the boys, and also a study of the dynamics between spouses and the conditions of marriage, and an analysis of the evolution of arguments.

It's actually a fascinating portrayal of the shifting alliances which take place during an argument, the way points of view morph and move, and eventually it seems like the argument is running away with itself.

It helps that they all start drinking; that makes things really fun.  It also helps that the movie's short, because there's only so much of the intense breakdown that you can tolerate in one sitting.

Bottom line: it's a fascinating study of behavior and a train wreck of a collision between highbrow language and ideas and lowbrow actions.

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