Carnage

Opening Night Gala

Summoning up the sinister from beneath the veneer of normalcy has always been Roman Polanski’s specialty, so it’s no surprise that the great director does such a smashing job of putting Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony-winning play God of Carnage on the screen. With the expert cast of Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz and John C. Reilly, Reza’s explosively comic X-ray of the anger and venality lying just under the surface of the outwardly civilized behavior of two New York City couples has been fully realized. Returning to the New York Film Festival with a feature for the first time since he presented his debut work, Knife in the Water, at the very first festival in 1963, Polanski pries open the true nature of these characters in something of a companion piece to his previous New York-set film, Rosemary’s Baby. Although it was filmed in Paris, the Brooklyn locale is as convincingly rendered as are the alternately uproarious and devastating revelations of human nature. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Why you should see Carnage: NYFF Spotlight.