People are hamsters — at least, “Carnage” makes an apt comparison of the two.

“Carnage”

Roman Polanski’s latest film cages two couples in an apartment to mitigate a fight between their sons.

The film’s four main characters — a broker (Kate Winslet), a corporate lawyer (Christoph Waltz), a writer (Jodie Foster) and a small business owner (John C Reilly) — are parody portraits of the New York City upper-middle class.

This picture of Brooklyn is a departure from the film’s source material, the one-act play “God of Carnage,” by Yasmina Reza, even as the adaptation is by Reza and Polanski. But the play’s stabs at a bourgeois community and formality don’t translate well, however, since people are rarely acquainted with their neighbors and formal pronouns may as well be Latin.

However, the language does add to the character’s “cultured” posturing. Their visage makes conversation comically clunky and awkward as the four skirt around the particulars of their children’s confrontation.

The setting fits with Polanski’s style, as well, as the small living space pins them together and blocks them from outside contact. Winslet and Waltz’s attempts to leave are fruitless, as they never get further than the elevator. They may as well be climbing up glass walls.

Throughout the film, all four become increasingly territorial, and much of the movie is spent in a verbal pissing contest, with breaks for phone calls and projectile vomit. As their discussion progresses, the camera increasingly isolates and scrambles the characters — emphasizing their divisions and alliances. Interspersed is a jumbled social commentary that jumps from detached parenting to social status to gender roles to a number of petty issues. The film’s failure to settle down fogs any unified message.

Aided by a nice scotch, the couples’ manners, which were as natural as sweaters on rodents, inevitably break down. It is blatantly obvious that they are ill-equipped to deal with their lives, and they would be just as comfortable devouring their children as they would be solving their disputes.

“Carnage” shines here, in its depiction of people’s failure to become truly civilized. The characters fail to have meaningful encounters, and instead cling to their own giant wheels — work or art or booze — to avoid interaction.

The movie drives at some Rousseauian revelation about reversion to a natural state, and these characters, at least, would be better off nibbling nuts and lounging in pine chips.

Catch “Carnage” at Ciné through Jan. 26