A History of Violence
When director David Cronenberg makes a point, it’s usually with a red hot poker. Cronenberg’s A History of Violence is another searing convergence of shock and awe, horrific images of violence smothered in hot, consensual adult sex, all guaranteed to make you feel queasy and uncomfortable.
If anyone is up to the task, it’s the director of Crash and Videodrome, the infamous new wave sci-fi thriller where singer Deborah Harry used her breast as an ashtray. Cronenberg is capable of mainstream storytelling (The Dead Zone, M. Butterfly), but seems more at home in the world of the macabre than the mundane. Which makes him the perfect candidate to steer this gritty little morality tale into a brick wall.
Once you’re willing to allow Cronenberg to drive, you’re only choice is to sit back and hold on as the director disregards all the sign posts up ahead. Forget The Twilight Zone, Cronenberg’s final destination will leave you shaking and bewildered.
John Olson’s screenplay, based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, is the cinematic equivalent of thumb screws, which Cronenberg slowly turns until the pain becomes unendurable. The opening scene is a masterpiece of subtlety, two men checking out of a dusty roadside motel, casually discussing their options. The men, Leland (Stephen McHattie) and Billy (Greg Bryk) say very little, but we immediately know they’re up to no good.
That fact is established when Billy inquiries why check-out took so long. Leland says the maid gave him some problems. Sent inside to fill a water jug, Billy hovers over a man and a woman, their butchered bodies lying in the middle of pools of crimson. The image barely phases Billy, and when a little girl emerges from the office, crying and clutching a teddy bear in her arms, he takes care of business without even flinching.
As horrifying as it is, this moment instantly establishes the characters as soulless monsters, capable of unthinkable acts of violence. Since everyone in the film will resort to violence in one form or another, it’s important to establish Billy and Leland’s hierarchy. Are you a bad guy for killing bad guys? Or a hero?
That’s the situation facing diner owner Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), who enjoys living in the small town of Millbrook with his wife Edie (Maria Bello), son Jack (Ashton Holmes), and young daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Millbrook is one of those Mayberry towns, where like the bar in Cheers, everyone knows your name.
Nothing much happens in Millbrook, unless you count the bullying Jack takes from the high school jocks. It’s business as usual in Millbrook when Jack and Leland pull into town, desperate for money. They pick Tom’s diner, first ignoring his friendly warning the place is closing, and then taking the customers and staff by force. Tom’s pleas to take the money and leave fall on deaf ears, and when Leland orders Billy to make their point, Tom disables Leland, kills Billy, and after being stabbed in the foot by Leland, shoots him through the top of his head.
Tom is stunned, the patrons and staff are stunned, and we really stunned because it’s at this moment we remember we’re watching a Cronenberg film. Instead of just showing the act of violence, Cronenberg refuses to pull back, rubbing the aftermath in our faces. At least we still have ours, as the camera slowly examines the effect a bullet has on a human jawbone.
Not very pretty, but it’s not supposed to be. Cronenberg isn’t celebrating violence, he’s showing us with every action comes a reaction. If we’re not repulsed by the carnage then we’re no more alive than Billy and Leland.
Tom becomes a hero and has his ruggedly handsome face splattered across newspapers and televisions. Most people would welcome such celebrity, but Tom has a secret buried in his past, and his past is about to catch up with him.
As far as storytelling goes, A History of Violence is extremely pedestrian and straightforward. Characters rarely say or do things that are not expected of them. Every set up has a conventional payoff, but under Cronenberg’s direction, convention is turned on its head. We know exactly where the film is taking us, still we find ourselves invested in the characters, gripped by the growing danger surrounding them, and ultimately relieved. Any filmmaker who can show all his cards and is still willing to bluff has my respect and admiration.
Surprisingly, Cronenberg isn’t bluffing. Like David Lynch, Cronenberg is a master of transforming middle American portraits into tortured landscapes, forcing everyday people to deal with extraordinary events. In Scanners, an average man learns he has the ability to make people explode; scientist Jeff Goldblum confronts his inner-insect in The Fly; while Jeremy Irons does double duty as identical twin gynecologists in Dead Ringers.
When we meet Tom, he’s pretty plain and ordinary, the sort of fellow you would expect to meet in a folksy small town. It’s important we believe this facade, and Mortensen is excellent at conveying just the right amount of earnestness and sincerity. When Tom reacts to the violence in the diner, it is apparent he is working on more than survival instinct. There’s swift execution in his movements, direct hits guaranteed to exact the most damage.
Tom’s sudden transformation isn’t lost on the town or his family, or the strangers who appear one morning in the diner. Led by the scarred Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris at his most sinister), the men not only know who Tom is, but who he was, and what he is capable of. Tom passes it off as mistaken identity, but as the stakes and the body count grow, we learn differently. As Tom confronts his past, Cronenberg ratches up the suspense, creating one conundrum after another.
A History of Violence is weighty and asks the audience to pay attention. There’s a lot of meat on this bone, and anyone who walks away hungry didn’t do their job. Most films require little of the audience, but A History of Violence demands you invest more than your time. Cronenberg may expose us to acts of extreme violence, but they’re never exploitive. They’re validations of his argument: violence begets violence, and the more it escalates, the more extreme and graphic it becomes.
Which is why Cronenberg is careful to balance the gore with equally hard-hitting drama, giving us characters who mean more to us than just custodians of our time. We really do care about Tom and his family, even when they do stupid things to advance the plot. We also understand and feel their passion when sex becomes their only outlet for rage. Cronenberg makes the sex as penetrating as the violence, first exploring the boundaries established by this married couple, later breaking down those barriers to accommodate the madness around them.
Maria Bello is excellent as a woman who believes she has it all, only to watch her life unravel in the most violent and unexpected way. It’s a brave performance, filled with fire and honesty. As Tom’s long lost brother, William Hurt has fun with an over-the-top role grounded by the actor’s conviction. The cast is uniformly excellent, capturing the flavor of a small town gripped in a crime wave, while the production values are perfect in their detail.
A History of Violence will shock you to the core, but it does so with purpose and insight.
Taking Out The Trash
Cronenberg Teaches a Lesson in Violence
A History of Violence
Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt, Ashton Holmes, Stephen McHattie, Greg Bryk, Peter MacNeill. Directed by David Cronenberg. Rated R. 96 Minutes.
Larsen Rating: $9.00
