Carnage (2002)

Load of rubbish!!

An absolute waste of money

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

Every now and then a film crosses my screen that deserves being lauded or decried. This one is for the latter category. This film begs the question - who cares? Who cares about any of the superficially and unrealistically drawn characters? Each one is eccentric to the point of silliness, and yet the director assumes the viewer will follow each story with some degree of emotional connectedness. The format is Altman-ish without the brilliance. People who's lives could not be any more different have a thread of a connection through a dead toro. And as the characters utter sentences that could be provocative, it seems more like dead-pan humor than anything else. Its a shame that the script with its "trying too hard to be deep" awkwardness never amounts to anything more than a mild freak show, including real burn victims made to sing a song about being burned. This film felt as though the director was trying to make it provocative without the benefit of substance.

CARNAGE is a stunning film - though from the outset it should be made clear that it is not a film for all audiences. For those who cringe at gore, those who are frustrated by nonlinear storyline, and those who feel uncomfortable with magical realism - beware. This is a two-hour plus journey that demands concentration and suspension of belief to glean all of the multi-layered meanings it holds.Stylishly opening with the elegant dressing and preparation of a handsome young bullfighter discussing his incipient time in the ring with his father, the film moves into a the bull ring in Spain and while the young bullfighter is gored, a young girl watches in horror on a television in France. Thus the sequence of coincidences begins. The dead bull is dragged from the ring, butchered, and his various parts (meat to restaurants, horns to a taxidermist, testicles, eyes, etc) are sent to unrelated places in Spain, Belgium and France. Along the way we meet the child who observed the goring on television and discover she is epileptic and draws pictures where dogs are larger than humans (because her's is!), an actress searching for her center, a therapy group bonding and yielding primal screams while nude in a pool, a taxidermist who lives with his mother (the wondrous Esther Gorintin of 'Since Otar Left') and his estranged anatomist brother married to a woman pregnant with quintuplets (neither brother speaks to their damaged father), and so many more. Each of these characters encounters one form or other of the dead bull as food, souvenirs, gifts, etc: each time the consequences of these coincidences add greatly to the story.Meanwhile our gored bullfighter lies in coma in need of a liver transplant and it is one of the various women touched by the bull's demise in some way that dies in an accident and becomes the saving liver donor to the young bullfighter. The manner in which all of these myriad coincidental effects of the original bullfight mesh (altered relationships, rejoined parent/child schisms, deaths, altered lives) are sewn tightly together by the end of this apparent conundrum of a story.The cast is uniformly exceptional. The camera work and pacing are mesmerizing, making the willing eye of the viewer see far more than previously thought possible. Writer/Director Delphine Gleize is truly a talent to closely observe. The audience for this artwork may not be large, but for those souls seeking unique films this one is Highly Recommended. Grady Harp

I really have no idea what the other people who have posted on this film are thinking. Maybe they don't really know what they are talking about. This film blew me away. I saw it a week ago and i cannot get it out of my mind. I will admit that i am a fan of the six-degrees stories. I think they are quite interesting and i'm sorry if some people are too used to their linear, straight forward plot lines of most major features. The cinematography is beautiful throughout the entire film, and the mise-en-scene really deserves a second or third look to be fully appreciated. The characters are dynamic and interesting, and we care about them without having everything fed to us on a platter. I was so amazed to learn that this was the directors first film, and i greatly anticipate anything she puts out in the future, please see this movie and make up your own mind. I really doubt anyone will be disappointed, even if you do not hold it in as high regard as me.

A movie about various characters in three countries and a dead bull? This could easily be one of those tedious, plotless, arty French films I hate so much. In fact, it isn't. Carnages is an intriguing, well-made and sometimes funny movie, well worth seeing. The storyline centres around the remains of a dead bull, that one way or another turn up in the lives of the main characters, sometimes with dramatic consequences. This alone makes pleasant viewing for superficial moviegoers, but behind the main storyline are many layers the director invites us to explore. One of them is the parent-child relationship. One of the first scenes shows a bullfighter talking about his father, the movie ends with two brothers reunited with their long-lost father. One of them is father of quintuplets, the other lives with his mother. Another theme is the life-death contrast, and no doubt there are others I didn't discover. Feel free to do so yourself. Despite these themes and the various interwoven storylines, the movie isn't hard to view. There are many little jokes and funny situations. When one of the main characters orders eight pizza's for three people, this seems ridiculous. Only later the viewer realizes his pregnant wife was expecting quintuplets at that moment. What makes the movie even more enjoyable are the beautiful shots and the outstanding acting. In this film a shot of a little girl watching a bullfight on TV is an exciting scene. That's a difficult job to accomplish.