A History of Violence
David Cronenberg (2005)
David Cronenberg is a better director when physical violence predominates as the theme and in the content of his movies. His psychological case study Spider (2002) was hopeless and the recent A Dangerous Method is a comedy show whereas his crime thrillers – this one and the subsequent Eastern Promises (2007), anyway – are focused and assured. Whether they amount to more than disturbing stylishness is another matter. The protagonist of A History of Violence, adapted by Josh Olson from a 1997 graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke, is Tom Stall, who owns and runs a diner in the small town of Millbrook, Indiana. Tom works hard; he’s a good husband to his lawyer wife Edie, a good father to their teenage son Jack and young daughter Sarah. When two criminals – seen committing cold-blooded murder in the film’s opening sequence – attempt, as Tom’s closing up one evening, to rob the diner and do worse to the waitress on duty there, both men end up dead, thanks to Tom’s courageous quick thinking: he shoots them with their own weapons. This popular, respected member of the community becomes a local hero and, while the story is news, a television celebrity. The diner is doing great business when one day two more shady characters make a call there. The senior one Carl Fogarty insists that Tom’s real name is Joey Cusack – previously a member of the Irish mob in Philadelphia and the man who scarred Fogarty’s face. Fogarty’s claim seems incredible but it turns out to be true; the rest of A History of Violence describes what happens to Tom’s happy family life in Millbrook and a return visit that he makes to Philadelphia, where his big brother Richie has never stopped being a gangster. (In the meantime, Jack has saved his father’s life by shooting dead Fogarty as the latter was about to put a bullet through Tom’s head.) In Philadelphia, Tom/Joey kills his brother and Richie’s henchmen in self-defence. He returns home to Millbrook, where Sarah, Jack and Edie receive him not with open arms but with varying degrees of tentative acceptance.
A History of Violence holds your attention but it gets less interesting as it goes on because what it has to say becomes so bluntly obvious. When Jack surprises himself by holding a catch that wins a high school baseball match, a couple of sore losers from the other team threaten him with violence in the locker room. Jack uses verbal wit to disarm them (not entirely believably); later on, he shows that he’s a better fighter than the boys who continue to taunt him – one of them ends up in hospital. In Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, extreme circumstances move to violence the timid mathematician played by Dustin Hoffman; Cronenberg’s film is much more schematic. Its grim prologue ends with the murder of a little girl; the director cuts to Tom’s daughter Sarah waking from a nightmare about monsters and being reassured by her parents and brother there’s really no such thing as monsters, although Cronenberg has already demonstrated otherwise. The appearance of Fogarty and his sidekick in Tom’s diner is one of the best moments in A History of Violence – partly because Ed Harris as Fogarty is such a naturally strong screen presence, partly because the two men register as replacements for the two criminals Tom has already killed. There’s a suggestion that violence is hydra-headed and the effect is nightmarish. As soon as they’ve left, Edie calls the local sheriff, who catches up with Fogarty’s car as it drives out of town and warns him that Millbrook is a community of decent people who won’t tolerate outsiders up to no good.
In the scheme of A History of Violence, however, it’s not enough that Tom and Jack get tough to protect themselves and those close to them: Tom’s nice guy identity has to be something constructed to conceal a history of violence not just as an individual but as part of organised crime. The revelation that he really is Joey Cusack seems set to destroy his marriage but when Tom starts having aggressive sex with his wife it turns out not to be quite the brutal rape it threatened to be: Edie is turned on by the violence of their lovemaking. The Irish mob is active in Philadelphia but I assume the city has other, more symbolic significance in A History of Violence as an ironic epitome of the inherent violence of American society. Not only is Philadelphia where the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence; its literal meaning is ‘brotherly love’ (the same idea was of course used to different ironical effect in Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia).
The casting of Viggo Mortensen as Tom/Joey is only partly successful. Mortensen sounds right enough (to English ears anyway) yet he seems faintly exotic and remote. This is very effective in the early stages: he builds up a strong sense of reserve. He seems like a man with a past outside the benign domestic circumstances in which we first see Tom Stall but he never seems like a man whose past was as Joey Cusack. Mortensen is convincing as someone capable of fighting back when he’s cornered, much less convincing as a willing participant in gang culture. As Edie, Maria Bello gives a performance that’s good enough yet lacking in surprises – the same is true of Ashton Holmes as Jack. Heidi Hayes in the smaller part of Sarah has a strikingly grave quality at times and Peter MacNeill is excellent as the sheriff but the stars of the show are definitely Ed Harris and William Hurt (as Richie Cusack).
12 April 2012