Cronenberg Looks at a Violent America
PICTURE MISSING
The complexity of Cronenberg’s A History of Violence can be foreshadowed by a quick and simple analysis of the film’s very title. Do these puzzling words refer to Tom Stall’s past that finally comes to bite him in the ass? Or is the title pointed, perhaps, at the history of the United States? And if it is, why stop at this particular country, when violence has been an integral part of any nation’s existence, when violence is an unavoidable, if unpleasant, aspect of the very nature of human beings?
A History of Violence is a broad enough term to be applied to everything at once. “You could say that the title is applied to the character having a history of violence, but also to the history of America,” Cronenberg explained at one point. “I don’t think there is any country that doesn’t have a history of violence.” His main star, however, went further. “On the press tour, we’d get into a lot of debates with the press because they would focus on it being the story of America. I’d tell them they were trying to get themselves off the hook. It’s a very human story about alienation. Yes, it’s very Americana, but the details are what make a story universal,” said Mortensen. However, it’s easy to see what made people deduce Tom’s story was connected to the country the narrative was taking place. After all, the image and power of the concept of reinvention are somehow firmly tied to the American identity.
The film might start out as a drama set in a clichéd little place in the heart of the United States, but in a little while it sets down a completely different path regarding its tone, atmosphere and motifs. What still stands out in our memory is the way Cronenberg portrayed all the action scenes: without a trace of idolizing, without a drop of fetishizing, violence is shown as close, personal, physically devastating. “I didn’t want to use slow motion, not have it be cinematic, but as real as possible. There are many approaches to violence in cinema. This one is not that often used,” the filmmaker said. When a journalist commented the action scenes were beautifully choreographed, Cronenberg strongly disagreed. “They weren’t choreographed at all. It’s very brutal and it’s very accurate and very realistic. I found some DVDs teaching you basically how to kill with your hands and now I can do that.” Violence is depicted as an inescapable part of the human nature, as the whole narrative somehow cloaks itself in Darwinian robes: the main character will do whatever it takes to survive, and he’ll succeed in it only if he’s more capable (that is, more fit) than his adversaries.
Are we all, without realizing it, taking part in a vast witness protection program? Did we observe, at some time in the distant past, a deeply disturbing event in which we were closely implicated? Were we then assigned new identities, new personalities, fears and dreams so convincing that we have forgotten who we really are? These questions crowded my head as I watched A History of Violence, a film as brilliant and provocative as anything David Cronenberg has directed. All Cronenberg’s films make us edge back into our seats, gripped by the story unfolding on the screen but aware that something unpleasant is going on in the seats around us. All Cronenberg’s films, up to and including A History of Violence, are concerned with two questions: who are we, and what is the real nature of consciousness? Together, the films seem to parallel the growth of the mind from the womb onwards. Early films such as Scanners and The Dead Zone explore the blurred frontiers between mind and body, very much a new-born baby’s perception of reality.
—J. G. Ballard - Link Here
Directed by David Cronenberg (
Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly, Naked Lunch, Crash), adapted from John Wagner and Vince Locke’s graphic novel by screenwriter Josh Olson (
Links to an external site.), shot by the British cinematographer and Cronenberg’s favorite collaborator Peter Suschitzky (
Links to an external site.), enhanced by the score of another Cronenberg’s career-long partner Howard Shore,
A History of Violence is a gorgeous film with a dark heart and a message that’s impossible to shake.
On the basic level, it’s an exciting combination of drama, action and the typically Western theme of a man with a dirty past fighting for a second chance in life, with terrific performances from Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt. If you scratch a bit deeper, it’s an intelligent study of the human condition and the basic impulses that drive us all. There are two pieces of trivia we should all be reminded of. According to the first one, Viggo Mortensen considered A History of Violence the pinnacle of his career. “If not the best, it is one of the best movies I’ve ever been in. There’s no such thing as a perfect movie, but in the way that the script was handled, the way it was shot… it’s a perfect film noir movie, or it’s close to perfect, I should say.” The other interesting bit tells us this was also the last major Hollywood picture to be released on VHS. Of course, this certainly won’t mean a lot to a whole lot of people, but it sure is nice to see that this whole special era of enjoying quality films ended in such a powerful, meaningful note.
With History, I took John Wagner’s premise, title, and—god help me for using this phrase—“inciting incident,” and then leapt off and told my own story. The graphic novel was packed with story, it just wasn’t a story I wanted to tell. It’s a solid, smart and fun action thriller, but I was a lot more interested in getting into questions of identity. In the book, there’s never a moment’s doubt that the main character is the man the mob guys think he is. I felt like that was a missed opportunity. I thought it was a great chance to play with a classic “wrong man” scenario in which the wrong man is actually the right man. And that led me to start thinking about identity, and what it is that constitutes your “self.” Is Tom the guy they all say he is? Or is he the guy he’s made himself into?
The freedom to stray from the material doesn’t necessarily come from the material, but from your own response to it. It also has something to do with the studio’s needs, as well. If you’re doing Harry Potter, there’s a billion fans that the studio’s trying to serve. If you fuck around with the fundamentals of the stories or the characters, you’re gonna be out of a job. But with something like History, we were talking about a ten-year old graphic novel that had a very small print run. There wasn’t a market-driven imperative to be faithful to the material, and it wasn’t the enormous audience that compelled the studio to purchase the book. I found out when they hired me off my pitch that they’d had the same concerns with the book that I did, and had just been waiting for someone to come in and show them how to take it into a completely different direction. In the end, it’s gotta be a story you want to tell. I’ve written a lot of originals, but in the end, History was one of the most personal scripts I’ve ever written. —Josh Olson (
Links to an external site.)
The following article first appeared in PopEntertainment, November 3, 2005, written by Brad Balfour, ‘David Cronenberg: A Director Looks At Violent America (
Links to an external site.).’
Now transformed from a horror genre master (Rabid, The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome) to a full-blown, critically acclaimed and analyzed auteur, Toronto-based director David Cronenberg finally has made A History of Violence—the film that may be the Oscar-garnering capper of his career. With Cronenberg having done films with exploding heads, weird parasites entering various body parts, and babies growing in sacs on their mother’s stomach, this story of a simple small town cafe owner confronted with a criminal act that makes him a hero and changes his life, is downright restrained beyond belief. Yet the 62 year-old Cronenberg has crafted a timely meditation on the nature and effect of violence on a man and his family.
What did you really want this film to address?
The iconic American mythology was very interesting to me. I haven’t set a movie in America since The Dead Zone. It’s not like I have a message to the world. When it came to the depiction of violence, it was where did the characters learn their violence? And what was violence to those characters, but my idea of what I think violence should be. Violence is innate in humans; we are that strange creature that can form abstract concepts, so we can conceive of non-violence. There are people who think that a world full of peace would be boring and would lead to a loss of creativity. That’s an interesting, perverse argument that might some truth in it.
It’s in this film.
The fact that the audience finds the violence exhilarating and that the children find it attractive, even though they are repelled by the consequences, shows the conundrum we have with violence. So many people fear it, there’s so much money, energy, and government that are trying to avoid it at the same time that we outfit armies to go and commit it on other people—it’s very paradoxical and endlessly fascinating, yet it’s also very attractive which brings out the animal part of ourselves. Even the human, intellectual part of ourselves is also attracted to it. It’s not easy to lament that we are violent creatures because that is just too simplistic.
Even in the sex between Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello?
That’s right. People experienced in sex and honesty will admit that there’s a component of violence in sexuality—whether it’s subliminal or not. Radical feminists have said that any form of sex is rape. I know that they are extreme, but I know what they’re saying and there’s some truth in it. Even that which can be considered tender and intimate is, in a sense, a spatial violation. That’s what makes human sexuality so complex and reflective of every aspect of the human condition. That’s why I tend to have sex scenes in my movie; I am failing to really deliver the goods to myself and my audience in terms of looking everywhere for what’s really going on unless sexuality is in some way being examined. Especially in this movie, where there’s a couple who have been married for 20 years and has two children and the only sex scenes are between the couple. How could you really say you’ve done your scenes-from-a-marriage routine if you haven’t acknowledged their sexuality in a very specific way.
Yet there’s an optimism to this film.
The feeling is that, perhaps, for Edie (Bello), the Tom/Joey (Mortenson) hybrid is the full guy. Perhaps the marriage could even be a better marriage with the acknowledgment of that. Whether she can live with that or not is a whole other thing. With the sex scene on the stairs, there’s an attraction-repulsion thing happening. That’s another reason why I felt I had to have that scene. Despite the difficulty that people have with that scene, it is necessary to set up the possibility of hope in the ending.
of the Basic Impulses that Drive Humanity," Cinephilia and Beyond -
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