Now Playing: A History of Violence (2005, d. David Cronenberg)
If A History of Violence is David Cronenberg’s attempt to sell out to the studios, then he’s having the last laugh. It may have spendy production values, an A-list cast, and a story based on a comic book, but audiences expecting a Hollywood vigilante flick will leave scratching their heads. Cronenberg cannily adopts the trappings of such a picture, but refuses to give the audience the expected payoff of either a protagonist who has gone through a dark place only to emerge happily reunited with his loved ones, or the big “oh shit” moment where he realizes the horrible consequences of his actions. All the people our putative hero dispatches (and there are many) deserve killing, but Cronenberg (working from a screenplay by Josh Olson) refuses to let us feel comfortable about it.
The movie’s trailers spell out the blood-simple plot. Small town diner owner and all-around standup guy Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is closing up when two hoodlums on the lam come in, threatening to do some very nasty things to Tom and his employees (we know they mean business from a creepily chilly opening sequence). Acting on instinct, Tom disarms and kills them, becoming a local hero in the aftermath. Though he shuns the spotlight, media attention is pervasive, and attracts one-eyed Philly mobster Carl Fogaty (Ed Harris, who I always like better as a bad guy), who shows up with two henchmen to harass Stall’s family. Fogaty is convinced that Tom is actually a hood named Joey Cusack, and is determined to bring him back with him and take revenge for the loss of his eye. His persistence begins to wear on Tom’s small town lawyer wife (Maria Bello, in a fine performance) and son Jack (Ashton Holmes)—does Tom’s facility with violence belie a hidden criminal past?
All of this sounds like a typical (albeit watchable) crime flick. But a synopsis cannot begin to convey the profound ambiguity that Cronenberg invests in the story. He puts us in situations where we are rooting for Stall to take violent action, but when Stall takes that inevitable step, we cannot feel good for the character. Cronenberg seems to be saying that there is a hidden reservoir of violence within us all, but that tapping into it is not a cause for celebration for there is no going back afterward. Simpleminded critics have seen this as Cronenberg (a Canadian) criticizing America’s violent society. To view the film in those terms is to completely ignore Cronenberg’s body of work. In most of his films, Cronenberg serves up incredibly graphic violence (though one of his most effective, Dead Ringers, merely suggested it with some really ghastly-looking gynecological instruments), but even in his early horror work, the violence is never an end unto itself, but a way to get under the audience’s skin, to infect their thoughts with indelible images that create resonances long after the film is over.
Cronenberg confounds expectations throughout the film, perhaps most effectively by turning the final act into a gruesome comedy, as Tom confronts the head of the Philly crime family (a scene-stealing William Hurt). In fact, throughout the film, there are moments where the audience is encouraged to laugh, either out of embarrassment (there are two sex scenes which are quite graphic by current Hollywood standards) or even outright physical comedy. But I don’t think the appropriate reaction is to stand up and yell (as Jeffrey Wells reported happened at the Cannes premiere) “Stop laughing--it’s not funny!” Cronenberg is too expert a director to get a reaction other than the one he intends. He’s one of the few directors working outside the exploitation genre who won’t shy away from graphic sex and violence, but what sets him (and a few other gore auteurs such as Takashi Miike) apart from the hacks of the industry is his complete mastery over the form and function of what he’s showing (and not showing) us.
A History of Violence is the kind of film that takes time to properly assess. Leaving the theater, I was ready to place it somewhere between The Dead Zone and The Fly in the Cronenberg oeuvre; that is to say quite good but not great. Yet it has a lasting effect, and lingers in the thoughts a long time after it’s over. And that, kids, is the mark of a great director.
Posted by alangton
at 12:18 PM MDT