A History of Violence Review
by Rick Ferguson (filmgeek65 AT hotmail DOT com)October 13th, 2005
If you look closely enough at David Cronenberg's films, you'll find that they're all- every dad-blamed one of them, from the head-exploding yucks of his 1981 breakthrough film SCANNERS to his 2002 Ralph Fiennes mumble-fest SPIDER- exquisitely dry comedies. Filtered through the prism of his work, Cronenberg has morphed from pigeonholed horror director to cult bio-horror madman to respected indie auteur. Critics bow and scrape before him and examine his films the way a pagan priest examines the entrails of a goat, searching for signs and portents as they try to divine the Truth behind his art. But what they're not doing is laughing- and they should be, because Cronenberg's is the most consistently brilliant body of comic work out there.
You disagree? Consider Christopher Walken in THE DEAD ZONE. Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY. Jeremy Irons in DEAD RINGERS. Surely these are three of the great comic performances in film history. Imagine Woody Allen, Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin in these roles, respectively, and Cronenberg could pretty much have shot each of them as is and had audiences rolling in the aisles. NAKED LUNCH was an overt, if obtuse, comedy, and CRASH, his 1996 crunched-metal- and prosthesis-porn epic, only makes sense as a comedy.
Whether Cronenberg is aware of this, I haven't the foggiest. His interviews reveal no winks or sly nudges on his part. But the filmmaker's intent, if he has one, is entirely different from your reaction as a viewer; if you think it's a comedy, then it is. And Cronenberg's films make me laugh. So it came to pass that I saw his new film, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE- and although most critics have been solemnly praising its stark, perceptive unveiling of the Beast Within all of us, I pretty much chuckled, guffawed and chortled through all of it. Its message isn't nearly as deep or as compelling as Kenneth Turan thinks it is. But a filmmaker as gifted as Cronenberg can't help but make even a very shallow pool attractive enough that you want to take your shoes off and splash around in it for a while.
The setup gives us one Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), the Gary-Cooperish husband, father of two and proprietor of Stall's Diner in Thomas-Kincaidish Millbrook Indiana. Tom's a straight-shooter and solid family man, the kind of standup guy who'll see his daughter off to school, toss the ole pigskin with his teenage son and then head upstairs to eat out his babe-alicious wife while she's wearing a cheerleader outfit and no panties. Let me tell you, life ain't too bad.
Complications arise, however, when a couple of loutish thugs, whom we've just witnessed massacre a roomful of folks in a seedy motel office, step into the diner one evening at closing time. Words are exchanged. Guns are drawn. Tom tries to defuse the situation, but soon enough he has to go all Billy Jack on them and open up a can of whupass. By the time the cops show up, the two thugs are sprawled dead in pools of their own blood and the locals are looking at Tom with brand new levels of respect.
Life gets back to normal, but only for a day or so. Then an ominous black sedan pulls into town and mobster Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) enters Tom's diner with a couple of overcoat-wearing henchmen in tow. Seems Carl saw Tom on television and recognized him as an old friend- only the last time Carl saw him, Tom was a Philadelphia gangster named Joey Cusack, and he was sawing out Carl's left eye with barbed wire.
The rest of the film examines the complications that arise from this wacky plot twist. Is Tom really Joey from Philly? Why is he so adept at killing people, anyway? How will his wife Edie (Maria Bello) react to learning that he may be mobbed up? And will the bad guys continue to telegraph their presence by pulling up in black sedans?
Here's the thing: I expected this picture to delve into STRAW DOGS territory. If you don't recall STRAW DOGS, the 1971 Sam Peckinpah-directed ode to noble male savagery starring Dustin Hoffman as a mousy mathematics professor forced to unleash the Beast Within, then put it in your Netflix queue immediately. Nobody understood the relationship between sex, violence and male virility better than Peckinpah, and I'm here to tell you that STRAW DOGS runs circles around Cronenberg's picture.
HISTORY is written and filmed like a fable of the old West; the town, the townspeople, the characters and the dialogue all exhibit a stiff, banal formality that subverts any attempt to take the story seriously as something that might actually happen in the real world. A subplot involving a bully who torments Tom's teenage son Jack (Ashton Holmes) is straight off-the-shelf cliché. And the black sedans- come on. If "The Sopranos" taught us anything, it's that mobsters drive SUVs. If it weren't for the occasional explosions of gunfire, the plethora of gaping bloody wounds and the smoking hot sex scenes, you'd think you were watching a Chris Columbus film.
In the hands of a lesser director, then, HISTORY would have been a trite bore with a moral no more compelling than violence begets violence. But in the hands of Cronenberg, who has mad skills, it becomes the driest of comedy martinis, a chilly glass of the finest Grey Goose with just the barest rumor of vermouth. The film is structured as a series of violent, explosive climaxes, each one bloodier and more laugh-out-loud ludicrous than the one before. The black sedans are not clichés, but rather sly signals. Ed Harris wears a fine twinkle in his one good eye throughout. The sex scenes are blisteringly funny. Mortensen, who at first blush seems doomed to play the dullest of reluctant heroes, reveals at a crucial moment a character who may actually be dumber than he looks. And then there's William Hurt. His role in the film I won't reveal to you, but it's probably the single greatest comic part he's ever played.
So if you forget all the egghead critic talk about how deep is the film's message and how complicated are Cronenberg's themes and how the film resonates in today's culture, and just enjoy it for the laughs, then you'll have a good time. Cronenberg's films don't look like comedies because they don't end like comedies; rather than wedding bells and reunited lovers, his films usually end in tragic death and psychic despair. Shakespeare understood that comedy and tragedy were mirror images of one another- that's why "Much Ado About Nothing" is a tragedy all the way until its happy ending, and "Hamlet" is full of high farce all the way until everybody dies. In David Cronenberg, the Bard would recognize a kindred spirit.
***
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