>>REVIEW
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE
STARRING Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello and Ed Harris
DIRECTED BY David Cronenberg
Opens Friday, September 30
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It’s never wise to trust a first impression. Given A History of Violence’s warnings about appearances, it’s no wonder that David Cronenberg’s most seemingly mainstream movie since The Fly turns out to be nearly as knotty and unsettling as his most notorious provocations.
Don’t be fooled by the Hollywood pedigree, high-profile cast or lack of imaginary orifices – the Toronto director’s latest delves into the same psychic muck he’s explored as a filmmaker for nearly four decades. His typically acute observations about identity, repression and the human body give depth to a satisfying piece of entertainment that functions remarkably well as a western, a film noir and a social comedy. Naturally, that last element is the one people least expect.
"It’s a funny movie, too," says Cronenberg in an interview just before the film’s North American première at the Toronto International Film Festival. "People may wonder what’s going on when they hear that about a movie that has the title A History of Violence. I think once they see it, they’ll get it."
Loosely based on a graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke – Cronenberg didn’t know it existed until well after beginning to collaborate on Josh Olson’s script – A History of Violence is set in a small town in Indiana. After killing two thugs during a robbery attempt at his diner, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is hailed as a hero. Unfortunately, the hubbub attracts the attention of someone who doesn’t believe Tom is the upstanding family man he appears to be. Tom, wife Edie (Maria Bello) and their kids are menaced by Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), a one-eyed gangster who’s convinced that Tom is really Joey, a Philly underworld associate who went AWOL not long after he remodelled Fogarty’s face with some barbed wire. Having witnessed Tom’s aptitude for killing, viewers may share Fogarty’s suspicions.
With its psychologically conflicted protagonist and the extreme physicality of both the action and two love scenes that put the X in married sex, A History of Violence must’ve seemed like a natural choice to Cronenberg. But the director says he’s not interested in themes when he’s reading scripts.
"Undoubtedly there’s some mechanism working subconsciously," he admits. "People do tend to think I have a checklist of things. Does it have body portals? Does it concern identity? If the script has five out of 10, then I’ll do it. But I don’t really think like that. I try to let the script wash over me like I’m watching a movie. I either respond to it or I don’t. In this case, I was attracted more by the American mythology, the iconic Americana – that wouldn’t have been on the checklist."
The echoes of classic westerns are unmistakable in the smalltown setting and presentation of Tom as the valiant defender of his homestead. Yet part of what makes the film so interesting is how the nastiness that Tom is supposed to be protecting his family from ends up infiltrating all of his relationships. "The western really stresses conservative Christian values in terms of redemption and so on," he says. "This movie subverts that."
Cronenberg hoped to bring the same outsider’s eye that Fritz Lang and Alfred Hitchcock employed on beloved Hollywood genres. "It was interesting to think of foreign directors who’d come to America and made movies that were quintessentially American, but of course they had a slightly different take," he says. "They understood maybe more than Americans did that America’s mythology was a mythology and not a reality."
While critics have already tried to read the film as a critique of movie violence or even of violence’s role in American society, Cronenberg resists such interpretations, saying he was only interested in how it would be used by his characters. "I asked myself, what was violence to these guys? Was it a sadistically pleasurable thing? No, it was business. It’s very functional and therefore you get it over with as fast as you can and you get on with everything else."
To get a sense of what he wanted to portray, Cronenberg watched self-defence videos. "The emphasis is always on getting close," he says. "You should be able to smell the guy that’s attacking you, you should feel his sweat. The idea is to get really close, which is not a normal person’s response. You want to back away from the gun, the knife, the guy, whatever. That was very intriguing as a technique and very intriguing cinematically." As he notes, "It was the intimacy that was important."
The same can be said of the love scenes, which reveal more about the film’s themes and objectives than any of the bloodletting. These were Cronenberg’s most crucial additions to Olson’s original script. "I thought, OK, we’ve got a movie about two people who’ve been married for 20 years, they have two kids – I want to know about their sex life. You don’t see anybody deal with married sex on screen pretty much," Cronenberg says with a laugh. "It seems to be of no interest to people – it’s as if once you’re married, your sex life is dead. In fact, because of the vulnerability and the delicacy of a sex life, it’s a wonderful way to see what people are and how they are with each other. I wouldn’t really be legitimately examining this couple without seeing what happens with them sexually."
Cronenberg says that another title for A History of Violence might’ve been Scenes from a Marriage. "We joked about that on the set," he says. "There was a sense this was a portrait of a marriage in all kinds of ways, especially under duress."
While Cronenberg’s characters have to contend with a grislier scenario than the couple in Bergman’s masterpiece of marital angst, both films undercut their domestic crises with a welcome element of dark comedy. "You couldn’t really depict a marriage without there being humour," Cronenberg says with a laugh. "Even with Swedes!" |
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