EmoAbstracts Review of A History of Violence
Hollywood film director David Cronenberg has built a reputation for films that confuse, confound and warp viewer expectations. Naked Lunch, The Fly and Crash are all examples of his films that subvert the line between reality and fantasy. He began his career making films with horrific and invasive images, but in the last few years he has moved into the realm of psychological torment. Spider, a small-scale, indie effort, took viewers inside the unhinged mind of a paranoid psychotic.
Cronenberg’s newest film, A History of Violence, is less strange…but far more disturbing, where the torment is both physical and emotional. It is a ticking time-bomb of a movie that gives us images that will burry themselves in our brain like an ice-pick. It is a gripping, casually subversive piece of work that is both mesmerizing and magnificent that marries difficult large-scale social/psychological concerns with a pop-watchability without skipping a single beat. It is also a tightly controlled film about an extremely out-of-control situation: the prevalence of violence in American and how it affects individuals and our culture as a whole.
Violence stars Viggo Mortenson and Maria Bello as a happily married couple living the American dream with their two children in the Midwest. An act of pure heroism on Mortenson’s part sets the film in motion; but this non-traditional film never lets us forget that it was also a violent act…and as such has an explosive effect on everyone’s life.
Violence is directed by David Cronenberg whose films most always play out on the furthest shores of reality. Though he is on his best behavior here, he can’t help but provide his own provocative, off-kilter tone to the material. Adding those qualities to what appears to be an extremely straight-forward tale mesmerizes and disturbs us in ways that more fantastical tales rarely can. Cronenberg never goes overboard in his depiction of violence, a la Quentin Tarantino.
What this film is really about is the pernicious, corrosive effects of violence; how its taint is as hard to rub off as blood is to wash out. Each act of mayhem in the film, no matter how justified, simply begets another one. It starts to seem axiomatic, teaching us that once you allow violence into your life it will never leave you alone.
Helping to seamlessly blend the film’s philosophical concerns with its dead-on plot is the film’s excellent acting. Mortenson and Bello are absolutely terrific as a severely challenged husband and wife. And Ed Harris is a perfect picture of a controlled, bitter menace as someone who claims he knew the hero in an earlier life.
A History of Violence is a sensational piece of film-making that ultimately belongs to the man who held the entire equation to the film in his head: David Cronenberg. This film has such an obvious transparency that you can see through it to something else that is underneath the surface. And that something else is extremely disturbing; extremely disturbing, indeed.
Cronenberg’s newest film, A History of Violence, is less strange…but far more disturbing, where the torment is both physical and emotional. It is a ticking time-bomb of a movie that gives us images that will burry themselves in our brain like an ice-pick. It is a gripping, casually subversive piece of work that is both mesmerizing and magnificent that marries difficult large-scale social/psychological concerns with a pop-watchability without skipping a single beat. It is also a tightly controlled film about an extremely out-of-control situation: the prevalence of violence in American and how it affects individuals and our culture as a whole.
Violence stars Viggo Mortenson and Maria Bello as a happily married couple living the American dream with their two children in the Midwest. An act of pure heroism on Mortenson’s part sets the film in motion; but this non-traditional film never lets us forget that it was also a violent act…and as such has an explosive effect on everyone’s life.
Violence is directed by David Cronenberg whose films most always play out on the furthest shores of reality. Though he is on his best behavior here, he can’t help but provide his own provocative, off-kilter tone to the material. Adding those qualities to what appears to be an extremely straight-forward tale mesmerizes and disturbs us in ways that more fantastical tales rarely can. Cronenberg never goes overboard in his depiction of violence, a la Quentin Tarantino.
What this film is really about is the pernicious, corrosive effects of violence; how its taint is as hard to rub off as blood is to wash out. Each act of mayhem in the film, no matter how justified, simply begets another one. It starts to seem axiomatic, teaching us that once you allow violence into your life it will never leave you alone.
Helping to seamlessly blend the film’s philosophical concerns with its dead-on plot is the film’s excellent acting. Mortenson and Bello are absolutely terrific as a severely challenged husband and wife. And Ed Harris is a perfect picture of a controlled, bitter menace as someone who claims he knew the hero in an earlier life.
A History of Violence is a sensational piece of film-making that ultimately belongs to the man who held the entire equation to the film in his head: David Cronenberg. This film has such an obvious transparency that you can see through it to something else that is underneath the surface. And that something else is extremely disturbing; extremely disturbing, indeed.