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A History of Violence October 10, 2005 |
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Tom Stall, this is your life, or rather, this is your lives. You live in a small Indiana town, you own a quiet Main Street diner where local old men come in for daily coffee and ubiquitous small talk, you blend in perfectly with the community, and you’re the head of a lovely household with a smart teenage boy, an adorable pre-school daughter, and a gorgeous lawyer wife. Everything in your life is comfortable, but something happens one night, something seemingly heroic, from the public’s perspective, but something you’d rather not happened, because from your perspective, as that of an innocent family man whose past, supposedly, is as plain and ordinary as the backside of a piece of white bread, any publicity is bad publicity, because maybe, that white bread past has a few hints of mold. That is the premise, or more appropriately, the quandary, at the center of “A History of Violence”, the new study in disillusionment and secrecy from Canadian master David Cronenberg, who fashions a film of stark solitude, personal family drama, and quick bursts of intense violence out of that most basic of psychological dilemmas, split personality. In “Dead Ringers” he used a similar concept; that two very different twin doctors eventually merged into one being through drug abuse, sexual experimentation, and the devolution of a kind of symbiotic psychosis, but here his hero is one man, and the question is less about whether Tom Stall is living a double life fraught with denial and deception, but the consequences of it, on himself, on small town values, on his nice family, and on a larger scale, on the American Dream itself. Your past is your burden, and in “A History of Violence”, no matter how far you run, something from it always catches you in the end. Viggo Mortensen, in his first stand-out role since taking control of Middle Earth in ‘Return of the King’ (“Hidalgo” doesn’t cut it), stars as Tom Stall, proprietor and family man from Millbrook, Indiana who is leading a perfectly serene life in middle America when his sleepy diner is held up by two very tough, very bored serial killers. In the film’s masterful opening long take, we see the killers in preparation before a brutal motel massacre, so we can guess that when these guys roll into Millbrook on a Saturday night, nearly 20 full minutes after the opening murder, they mean business, and that business is more than petty larceny, as anyone familiar with Hemmingway’s “The Killers”, or the various filmed adaptations of it, would know. The intense hold-up/potential mass murder of Tom’s diner is thwarted, however, when Stall, quick on his feet, catches the lead gunman unawares with a coffee pot to the head, capturing his gun in the process and killing the two dead on the spot, a heroic act that lands him on national television as, what else, an American hero, the kind of small town story that makes big city news headlines, and can turn a private citizen into a reluctant celebrity. “It was just a terrible thing,” he tells a pushy reporter, oblivious to his need for privacy, “and I think we’ll all be better off if we got past it.” That, my friend, is where the trouble begins, because no sooner than the day after the media circus dies down, does a mysterious one-eyed mobster from Philadelphia (Ed Harris, stealing scenes as usual), show up at Tom’s diner, suggesting that our good old hero is ruthless gangster Joey Cusack in hiding, and Joey Cusack is a wanted man where he comes from. Of course Tom denies the similarities, and his loving wife Edie (Maria Bello) stands by his word, to a fault, but the mobster persists, leading to intimidation, confrontation, and a shocking two-minutes of screen violence that shatters the very fabric of normalcy, a major theme Cronenberg eludes to throughout the picture, as the mystery of Stall’s past, and the constant threat of murder, begin to erode the mundane, yet happy life of a seemingly perfect American family. “A History of Violence” fits perfectly with past Cronenberg films like “Videodrome”, “The Fly”, “Dead Ringers”, “Naked Lunch”, “Crash”, and “Spider” in that it deals with the transformation of man, both physically and psychologically, from one given environment or personality to another. Stall is running away from a former self that was a ruthless, hedonistic killer, and turning to the middle American bible belt to live a new life of solitude, secrecy, and family values is about as far from the Philadelphia organized crime scene as one can get. And it works, for awhile anyway, and not unlike Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven”, the violent past of a reformed man is utterly inescapable, and though circumstances cause him to fight for the protection of his family, the brutal violence seems to suggest a thin line between intent, and self defense. In a similar vain, also stemming throughout Cronenberg’s cannon, the film’s two explicit sex scenes between Mortensen and Bello – one fantasy, the other auto erotic – bring about a deep connection between innocence, escapism, eroticism, and the perverse rush that incredible danger, and the unknown, can materialize in a routine sexual relationship. Like the scenes of quick, grizzly violence, the sex scenes are difficult to handle, but then again Cronenberg isn’t a director who will coddle an audience and tell them when it’s safe to look again, he’s all about confrontation, the metaphysics of suddenly exposed privacy, the awkward ramifications of a hidden secret, the life-altering consequences when crime is introduced into a peaceful surrounding, and the innocent victims in its destructive path. “A History of Violence” may not be easy, but it’s a structurally perfect thriller, masterfully directed, and features a lead performance by Mortensen of much depth, strength, and vulnerability, creating out of a long lost Dirty Harry, a bitterly regretful William Munny. “A History of Violence” is playing at the Quaker Crossing cinema in Orchard Park. by Adam Suraf
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