A story of violence

Noel Vera

In "A History of Violence," David Cronenberg's loose adaptation of
John Wagner's graphic novel, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is your
average small-town Joe running a diner on the community's one main
street, and living with his lawyer wife Edie (Maria Bello) and
children Jack and Sarah (Ashton Holmes and Heidi Hayes,
respectively) in their house just outside of town. He enjoys a
quiet, unremarkable life until two men walk in at closing time
asking for coffee (he has to politely tell them the place is
closing), asking for pie, going on to other things…like threatening
to rape Stall's waitress, then threatening to kill her and everyone
else in the diner. Stall suddenly moves, and his act leaves both men
on the ground, dead of gunshot wounds, Stall seriously wounded; he
finds himself turned into a minor celebrity, mentioned at one point
on nationwide news.

Stall's family is thrilled at the instant fame; Stall himself isn't--
finds it unpleasant, for some reason. The reason, as it turns out,
is a Mr. Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris, with craggy scarred face and one
milk-white eye), a business-suited man who enters the diner with a
few other suited men and starts calling Tom "Joey."

It's a simple enough story on the surface, running on what seems to
be a simple enough principle: violence begets violence (thanks to
electronic news media and communications, the begetting is all that
much faster). Fogarty could be a gangster who has mistaken Tom for
someone else wanted by the mob bosses in Philadelphia; he could be a
nut attracted to Tom's heroic act, wanting to deflate the man's
sense of accomplishment (what little there is evident); he could
even be telling the truth. It doesn't matter which is true; the
principle is demonstrated just as clearly by all three alternatives.

Key to the film is Stall's reaction to what's happening. Mortensen
plays him with his trademark laid-back charm, as a man who lives
life slowly and likes it that way; he doesn't so much walk as lope
down the street, stopping to chat with his customers (you can almost
see him on a horse, tipping a cowboy hat--or crown, if you like--to
the senoritas, (and in fact much of the film moves and feels like a
classic Western)). When the news cameras and reporters train their
attention on him he has a becoming modesty, uncomfortable with the
fame yet answering all questions with a courtesy that seems inborn.
He's a likeable man, and it shows in the way people around him
respond--they're fond of him and they're willing to help him,
sometimes against their better judgment. To the children he's a
gentle father, to his wife Edie a loving husband; an early scene
between the two has Edie dressing up as a cheerleader, doing a
little role-playing to spice up their sex life (it's a scene that
could easily draw hoots from the audience, but Mortensen and Bello,
with Cronenberg directing, make love with such unselfconscious
playfulness you find yourself laughing with them more than at them).

When Tom is forced to act he's like a different person entirely--
your eye turn from his face with its gentle eyes and sad mouth to
his body, which moves with a swift, deadly effectiveness; afterwards
he appears shocked, even startled, at what he's done. Cronenberg and
Mortensen seem to be suggesting that Tom has some kind of split
personality, that he switches from one to another almost
unconsciously as needed; once out, this second personality grows
more and more pervasive, sometimes with Tom losing conscious control.

There's more, a subplot where the son Jack is being bullied and
resists fighting back; suddenly Jack turns and attacks his assailant
and it's suggested that he's taken his cue from his father. It's a
seemingly tiresome sidetrack with an unlikely conclusion, unless you
read Cronenberg in an interview saying he subscribes completely to
the theory of evolution, in which case Jack's outburst chillingly
suggests yet another way violence begets violence. Late in the film,
when more blood is shed, father faces son and their shared look is
something to behold: a mixture of dismay and relief, perhaps an
unbidden sense of pride on the part of the father; concern and anger
("What have you done to me?" crossed with "so where are your
lectures against violence now?") and--most disturbing of all--a
sense of triumph, of exultation on the part of the son.

Edie's reaction to the new Tom--or to Joey, granted Fogarty's right--
is even more interesting: an angry sense of betrayal, then arousal.
They have a breathless encounter on the house stairs that seems to
have a twofold purpose: one, get Tom off her back (he wants her to
somehow accept his new self--or believe that his old self is back);
two, find out just how good this Joey is in bed (so to speak).
There's implied assent to Tom's new nature in the way she helps him
deal with a suspicious sheriff, but it isn't complete surrender:
when he disappears for a few days and reappears without explanation,
her look towards him recalls the knot of painfully complex feelings
you see between Tom and his son--more complex and painful, perhaps,
because it's between man and wife.

Cronenberg's handling of the violence is of course the heart of what
he wants to say with the picture: the sequences are fast yet lucidly
photographed and edited, and they gain from the meandering realism
that precedes and follows them. Along the way he inserts shots of
wince-inducing horror, the consequence of various blows and gunshot
wounds: they have the full-frontal quality of his "body horror"
films, of the genre that he practically invented and made
indubitably his. What makes them disturbing is the way he lingers
over the shots a beat longer than most filmmakers would, inserts
them more often, and with timing different from what most other
filmmakers use. I've called Cronenberg a pornographer of horror
before, which isn't meant as an insult--it's the key to his
unwholesome appeal, why filmmakers like Martin Scorsese find his
work so compelling (it's not just the "never-before-seen-yet-somehow-
familiar" quality, but the implied obsession with body processes
that's so perversely fascinating). There is an element of theater to
his imagery, of a freak exhibition but with some of theater's more
literary conceits (Fogarty claims he can see only Joey through his
blinded eye--the monster in effect visible only through a monstrous
eye). This is the Cronenberg of "Rabid," "The Fly," and "Crash"
popping up to startle the audience, and the fact that he's hidden
away for so long only to be shown at precisely timed moments tends
to shock an audience used to the cartoonish violence they see in
regular mainstream fare (being lulled by the film's solemn deadpan
makes the surprise more upsetting).

There are bits of business that seem unconvincing (Would Tom's story
really have traveled nationwide? Why does Edie seem unperturbed by
the initial sighting of a black sedan (obviously not a news van)
outside their house? Why is the sheriff bothered by Fogarty's
certainty that Tom is Joey, but not bothered that Tom can handle so
many men at once?), moments and dialogue that seem stilted
(Cronenberg's command of quotidian drama was never perfect), and one
major, largely unanswered question (please skip the rest of this
paragraph if you haven't seen, or plan to see, the movie): what
happens with the rest of their lives? Violence being infectious,
seductive, even genetically inheritable we see in the film; what we
don't see are the long-term, cumulative effects. Will Tom hit Jack
again? Will Edie continue to put up with him? Will Tom crack under
the pressure of domestic life now that the dynamics have changed,
his inner peace with his old self shattered? Or will Edie, Jack and,
god forbid, Sarah follow his example (as Jack already has), and
respond with violence of their own--and is any of this a good thing
(a survival trait, maybe?)? Disturbing questions raised but never
really addressed, I felt, although to be fair Cronenberg's addition
of the two sex scenes to Wagner's story both deepens Tom and Edie's
relationship and shows us some of the more unsettling effects of
Joey's reappearance. I for one would have liked the story proper to
end with Fogarty (despite William Hurt's vastly entertaining turn as
Joey's loudly Jewish (Jewish?) brother Richie), and the rest of the
film to devote itself to the denouement--to the precarious balance
the family has to maintain, in order to preserve the quiet, happy,
possibly forever lost life they had. A more difficult and
interesting challenge I think and one, apparently, Cronenberg didn't
feel like taking.

Still, despite the not inconsequential flaw, it's difficult to
dismiss the film--the characters are too well-conceived, if not
fully explored, and you can't help but care about their respective
fates. And if the theme of violence as a creeping, perhaps genetic
disease (or heritage) isn't as developed as I'd liked, it's
presented in a manner only Cronenberg is capable of, and there's
pleasure to be had watching an unsuspecting audience get it--the
full Cronenberg effect--right between the eyes (or lower). One of
the best mainstream (so to speak) films to come out this year.

(First published in Businessworld, 10/7/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)