Posted: 09/22/2005

A History of Violence

(2005)

by Andrew Dowd

It is telling of the times we live in that, for the second year in a row, the most honest cinematic exploration of American society has been delivered by a non-American filmmaker. Last year, the culprit was Danish provocateur Lars Von Trier. His criminally underrated Dogville connected U.S. self-righteousness with the country’s penchant for exploitation, exposing the former as a justification of the latter. This year, the most insightful criticism of contemporary American culture is contained within A History of Violence, the latest from Canadian director David Cronenberg. It tackles the nation’s obsession with violence, and its simultaneous admiration and scorn for those who commit it. However, unlike Von Trier’s didactic epic, the film does not completely wear its thematic intentions on its sleeve. It is a short and tough, a smart thriller posing as a dumb, generic one. It’s also the most challenging work Cronenberg, that most eccentric of modern auteurs, has done in years.

Viggo Mortensen plays Tom Stall, a polite, mild-mannered Everyman living in some unidentified small town in the Midwest. He owns a diner with his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and together they look after teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes) and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). He has, as the ads for the film boldly proclaim, the “perfect life,” or, at least, a pretty comfortable, satisfying one. There is an awkwardness to these early scenes, which strain to depict Tom’s idyllic existence as an approximation of the American Dream. Once the Middle American tranquility of his life has been established, though, Cronenberg quickly gets to work on rudely disrupting it. In the second of many tense, shocking moments (the first being the deeply unsettling opening scene), two strangers pull guns in Tom’s diner, intent on robbing the place and potentially leaving no witnesses. On instinct, Tom acts, swiftly and efficiently disposing of both of them. The media immediately labels him a hero, and suddenly his face is all over the nightly news. Tom wants to forget the whole thing, but soon he finds himself facing a past that he thought he had escaped.

Tom, it seems, suffers from a severe identity crisis, one created by the vast difference in his past and present personas. As people begin to show up in town seeking to settle old scores, the question quickly becomes: which version of Tom is the real one? And which one does his society actually prefer?

Cronenberg’s greatest gift as a filmmaker has always been his ability to make profound social or psychological statements through the manipulation of genre conventions. No other director working today recognizes the intellectual and artistic potential of exploitation cinema. The early films of his career explored a very modern fear of contagious disease, using zombies and vampires as metaphors for the growing threat of biological contamination. A History of Violence is the filmmaker’s perverse take on gangster films and westerns. Working from a script by Josh Olson, who adapted John Wagner and Vince Locke’s graphic novel for the screen, Cronenberg uses the traditions of these two intrinsically American genres to challenge and critique the national values they express. As the title indicates, these values all revolve around violence, around its causes and effects.

The film is, first and foremost, about America’s paradoxical stance on violence, about how some forms of it are condemned while others are celebrated. This isn’t exactly new cinematic territory: Taxi Driver got there 30 years ago. Where the movie really earns its stripes is in its critique of the glorification of revenge and the country’s fundamental belief in the principle of an eye-for-an-eye. When Tom finally cuts loose like one of Clint Eastwood’s gun slinging vigilantes, he perpetrates violence only on those who have “earned it,” specifically the men who threaten his placid domestic lifestyle. Ed Harris, who oozes menace as one of these men, even calls him Dirty Harry at one point. But if Tom is the latest variation on the stoic American anti-hero, the very embodiment of righteous retribution, he suffers psychological consequences that most films of this type deliberately gloss over. And the damage that his behavior does to his family, particularly his impressionable son, profoundly suggests how violence constantly perpetuates itself from generation to generation. A bloody, post-standoff embrace between father and son disturbingly hammers this message home.

This is, of course, a lot of thematic weight to put on any actor’s shoulders. Mortensen, the handsome almost-star from Down Under, was a pretty risky choice for the lead. The actor’s quiet charm has, in the past, bordered on blandness, and A History of Violence’s psychological complexity is a far cry from the black-and-white morality of the Lord of the Rings films. But the gamble pays off, big time: Mortensen’s perpetually calm and subdued demeanor actually works in entirely in his favor. He’s so polite and reserved that when Tom’s amiable veneer drops, the outburst feels less like a shocking twist of character and more like the inevitable release of years of repressed tension. The actor makes his character’s internal conflict—the battle between the two sides of his—nearly palpable. He is matched scene for scene by Maria Bello, who has an equally challenging role. She goes through a wide range of emotions, her initial pride in her husband’s “heroic” actions melting into fear, anger, and distrust as details emerge about his checkered past. The film is bold enough to suggest that Edie is also secretly excited by the new Tom. When a physical fight between the two leads to a rough sexual encounter, with Tom behaving like a violent predator, the mixture of disgust and arousal on Bello’s face disturbingly captures the essence of the film’s ideological drive.

If, at this point, the films sounds like a dry and unpleasant sociological lecture, it should be mentioned that A History of Violence is still, at heart, a thriller. Cronenberg is a master at building tension and he doesn’t deny the audience the excitement of the film’s pulpy premise. At 90 minutes, the pace never slackens; the film hurtles forward relentlessly, fueled by both the mystery of Tom’s identity and the inevitability of the impending climax. It stumbles only in the last act, when William Hurt shows up as a verbose, aging gangster. The veteran actor’s performance is funny and playful, but it feels out of place, like a lost scene from Miller’s Crossing. The extended finale, while masterfully shot and staged, is just a little too over-the-top, and the line between subverting clichés and indulging in them blurs. Thankfully, the movie ends on a note of sobering ambiguity, a reconciliation tinged with regret and uncertainty.

A History of Violence, like Dogville, seems destined to be misunderstood. The audience at the advance screening roared with applause during the film’s most graphic moments, endorsing the violence that is inflicted on Bad People. These same viewers grumbled in slight disapproval as they exited the theater, perhaps disappointed by the lack of an uplifting moment of emotional catharsis. Seen as a straight revenge thriller, the movie is modest, perhaps even underwhelming, despite its big action set pieces. Its strength lies in its thematic ambitions and in the subversion of familiar cinematic conventions. For many Americans, this ode to our complicated love-hate relationship with violence may be just too bitter of a pill to swallow.

Andrew Dowd is a writer and student filmmaker living in Chicago.

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