“A History of Violence” Directed by David Cronenberg
New Line Cinema
The courtroom drama “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” has
recently drawn a lot of attention for its slick marketing campaign,
which duped audiences into pulling out their wallets for what they
believed was going to be a grisly horror film. The trailers for
“A History of Violence” are even more devious, as they
are both accurate and wholly misleading at the same time. David
Cronenberg’s latest film is being marketed as something of a
standard action thriller, which it is in one respect ““ but
what they’re not telling you is that it makes you think,
hard. About action thrillers. No, this is isn’t some
gleefully self-referential ouroboros of a film in the vein of
Charlie Kaufman, but an unsettling and complex examination of
violence and the American attraction to it. “A History of
Violence” is one of the most disturbing pictures of the year,
for the precise reason that it is so easily enjoyable. At a surface
level, the film is mostly as advertised. Tom Stall (Viggo
Mortensen) lives a quiet life as a family man in a small-town
community, until he thwarts an attempted robbery and is hailed by
the media as an American hero. Unfortunately, this attracts the
attention of some mobsters ““ led by the menacing, disfigured
Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) ““ who believe Stall to be someone
else. Stall is forced to protect his family, and in the process
face up to a shadowy past. As a thriller, it works ““ the
Hitchcockian wrong-man motif is intriguing enough to compel the
plot forward and keep the audience involved. The undercurrent
tugging at the film, however, is something of a running commentary
on the nature of violence. In the film, it is brutal and repulsive,
of the swift and ungainly variety that one is more likely to
encounter in the street than in an action movie. The tragic
consequences of violence also resonate throughout, as the film
details the irrevocable way in which the unfolding events affect a
modest American family. Yet the violence is immensely satisfying;
because the violent acts in the film are in self-defense,
Cronenberg skillfully draws audience sympathy toward their
consummation, thus making the audience implicit in the film’s
brutality. Questions are raised about the American attraction to
this kind of “good” violence. The film also draws from
the well of popular American cinema, serving as an effective
commentary on the attraction to violence in American movies. The
slowly building, suddenly climactic structure of the film centers
around a number of showdowns, bringing to mind Westerns of old.
Stall seems a page out of Robert Mitchum’s character in the
classic noir “Out of the Past” ““ a man hiding out
in a small town, whose mysterious history inevitably catches up to
him. The title, then, works in two ways, referring not only to the
protagonist of the film but, more subtly, to the film’s
audience members, who as cinemagoers carry with them a violent
history as well. The performances are excellent all-around. As
Stall’s wife, Edie, Mario Bello transforms remarkably from a
position of dominance in the relationship to one of feminine
vulnerability. Mortensen’s work is the kind of meticulous and
understated acting that is completely ignored come awards season.
One scene in particular, beginning as a confrontation between Edie
and Tom, escalates until it draws the primal connection between
violence and sex with an intensity that stuns. Sex and violence,
the carnal and the brutal: “A History of Violence”
would be the most ruthlessly introspective American film in some
time, if Cronenberg weren’t Canadian. ““ Alfred
Lee