movie mole: a history of violence

J & I reviewed A History of Violence, directed by David Cronenberg.

Nothing new here.

The film opens with a slow shot of a couple of guys, evidently criminals on the lam, “checking out” of a motel. This involves killing the folks who run the business, and the small girl who might have been a witness. We cut immediately to another small girl, screaming. She's had a nightmare about monsters, but her father, brother, and mother all pile into her bedroom to reassure her. The over-the-top contrast between the two sequences sets the tone for the film. Viggo Mortensen plays the devoted father of the small screamer, Tom Stall, who runs a diner in an Indiana town apparently without franchises, chain stores, or big box developments. When the criminals from the opening try to rob the diner, however, Tom goes into action, ruthlessly and gracefully killing both drifters and saving the employees and customers. The publicity that follows, presenting him as a hero, brings into the diner another group of scary men, this time mobsters from Philly who insist they know Tom as “Joey Cusack.” Although Tom's skill as a killer raises questions about his identity and threats to his family, it seems to empower his teenage son Jack, who finally stands up to a couple of high school bullies, and who seems to have inherited his father's ninja fighting skills. This comes in handy for another carefully choreographed scene of violent defense of self and family, in which the women are safely in the house, and father and son defend their turf.

What is the film saying about male violence, the american dream, redemption and forgiveness? Little enough about history. The stylized schematic quality of the film means there’s not much cultural or social context. And there’s not much personal history: we hear about Tom's transformation in becoming the family man we see at the beginning of the movie, but we don't see that transformation or know what motivated it.

The male protagonists (Tom and Jack) are both presented as soft, effeminate, gentle new-man types. But underneath, there’s violence. Tom’s wife Edie is a lawyer; Jack’s girlfriend tries to defuse a confrontation with the bully: the women try to avoid violence but the men know how to use it. She gets a restrining order and the the gangsters show up in the yard. And it turns her on even if she's also disgusted by it. Edie assures the sheriff that she trusts her husband is who he says, but then when they're alone, she rejects him. Tom begins to rape his wife, until Edie gets into it herself. We might suppose this shows that violence is a turn on for women as well as men, that everyone has that shadowy side underneath, or, more cynically, that it reflects a male fantasy about women being turned on by rape.

This film has been praised for the performances, which are generally good except for the stilted little blonde girl, and for the twists of the plot, which I found predictable, as well as for a critique of violence and its representations. The fighting and killing scenes are the most rapidly edited and kinetic parts of the movie, but some reviewers see the film as forcing us to interrogate our pleasure in these representations by holding the camera on the blasted, bleeding corpses of the dead, holding our attention to the consequences of violence, and placing the action hero in a version of the American dream—middle american heartland small town where neighbors greet each other on the streets, and the protagonist has a small business, a beautiful wife, two attractive children and a house in the country. Both Tom and Edie wear silver crosses, and one neighbor bids farewell by saying, “See you in church.” After killing his brother (who's been trying to kill him his whole life), Tom throws the gun in lake & bathes, baptism, rebirth, yadda yadda, yadda. Redemption is possible, but is apparently achieved by cleansing violence. The scenes of Tom's violence are all morally justified –he's acting in defense of self and family, the men he kills are not themselves redeemable.

But the notion that the wholesome heartland conceals a violent shadow is hardly new. (American Beauty, Blue Velvet) Nor is the gunslinger who tries to hang up his guns and gets pulled back to violence (Shane, Unforgiven).

The heterosexual nuclear family remains intact. Men defend it through righteous violence. Nothing new here.