A History of Violence...

[savageseraph]

I almost didn't go see A History of Violence today. I've been feeling less than good lately, and I was tired after Serenity. However, by the time I finished my sopapillas, there was only 15 minutes until showtime, and given the crappy times the movie is playing by me, I figured I'd best seize the moment and the film.



I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting in this movie, but it wasn't quite what I got. Now, I wouldn't say that I'm disappointed, not at all, and no, not just because it was a Viggo film. What? Why are you all looking at me like that?

The acting in the film by all parties was wonderful, as was the way Cronenberg captured the small town life, the softer focus, the warmth of the colors, the light, which was in contrast to the city, which is cold and dark and oppressive and often dank.

Because this is a Cronenberg film, I never quite believed that Tom Stall wasn't Joey Cusack. However, Mortensen's acting was certainly enough to cast a shadow of doubt, as he is so utterly convincing in the role. When Stall tells his wife to pull out the shotgun because he is convinced Fogarty and his men are coming to kill them, I became a bit more suspicious. Then when he dispatches Fogarty's men with a clinical precision, I didn't even need him to tell Fogarty that his one mistake was not killing him back in Philly when he had the chance for me to know.

The thing that I loved so much about the way this film was put together were the mirror scenes/actions, scenes/action that replay, repeat, though at a slant like a funhouse mirror, other scenes in the movie. The playful sex between Tom and his wife Edie at the beginning of the film is mirrored in the violent sex on the stairs. Tom shooting the robbers at the diner to save the waitress is mirrored in his son killing Fogarty to save him.

While the most violently thing Edie does is slap Tom, the heat and anger with which she lashes out at Fogarty in the mall points at her own inner rage, and if he and his men showed up and threatened her kids, I can imagine her using that shotgun in a hearbeat. Even the violent sex on the stairs isn't a rape. It starts out of anger and struggle, and while it stays violent, it's clear they both enjoy it and that it is Joey, not Tom, who is fucking her. I think that (the act and the fact she enjoyed it) disturbs Edie as much as all the rest. Realizing that it's in her too.

Tom and Jack, his son, form perfect mirrors of each other. With the father Joey, who is an efficient killer, wraps around himself the glamour of Tom Stall. He is the wolf pulling on sheep's clothing and becoming a sheep. His son is the one who avoids conflict, tries to defuse and deflect it, and yet he still finally beats the kid who is bullying him senseless and kills Fogarty. Does it matter which state each of them started out in when they both arrive at the same place in moments where their safety and that of those they care about is threatened?

Tom chose to walk away from a life of violence. We don't know if it was remorse or the sure knowledge that it would likely earn him a way to an early grave. Or both. Still, he didn't have to it. He chose to. Do we applaud him for that? For acting to defend others now? Or do we see it as him falling back into a life that he can leave behind but never be rid of?

Jack learns very quickly to resort to violence. Anyone who has been picked on by the school bully has revenge fantasies like Jack lives out? Do we live his "victory" out with him, or do we mourn the passage of the sweet and likeable boy he was before all this? Was that boy the illusion that cloaks the one who shot Fogarty? Or is it the other way around?

When Richie asks Joey if he dreams of himself as Joey or as Tom, I would have liked to have heard the answer to that. However, that isn't a question that Cronenberg answers for us: it's the one he asks us to grapple with.

I like that Cronenberg leaves the question open in the end as well. That there is the lovely silent scene where Tom comes home and Sarah brings his plate to the table and Jack passes the food, and Tom and Edie sit across from each other, not looking at each other for a long time until they finally do. Both of them look wounded and haunted and on the verge of tears.

There's no happily ever after here, though I think it safe to say that Tom will stay with his family. Edie wouldn't have covered for him with the sheriff if she wanted him gone. There wouldn't have been a plate and silverware sitting on the counter waiting if they weren't expecting or hoping he would come home. However, wanting to be Tom (for Joey) or wanting to have Tom back (for the family) comes with the knowledge of the fact that there can be no Tom without Joey.

And maybe that is the way it is for all of us. Deep down.

Comments

[nikkie222.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent analysis of the film. Having read way too much about it beforehand (I already knew the ending even), I was afraid I'd be let down, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly. I went back and saw it again today. I thought David Cronenberg did an excellent job with it as did Viggo.

I also wanted badly to know the answer to the dream question!!!

I loved the way Viggo switched personalities with just changes in his eyes, posture and speech. He was incredible.

I'm not going to add to what you said other than to say, when the journalists at TIFF asked Cronenbert whether it was Joey or Tom who sat down to dinner at the end and whether it would all work out for them, he said it was a Joey/Tom combination and it was unclear as to whether it would work out. People in my theatre today at the end (actually a couple of men) said WTF!! at the ending, but then on the way out commented that of course realistically, it really couldn't end any other way. He couldn't have come in and been greeted with warm hugs and kisses and everything back to Mr. and Mrs. Perfect Family.

The movie left me feeling haunted, which also was the point.

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

Other than the trailers, I remained mostly spoiler free for this film. Not that I was actively avoiding, just not actively looking. Which, I suppose, is passively avoiding. Because I didn't want to know up front if it was mistaken identity or no. Heck, I didn't even know about William Hurt. When he walked down the staircase, I was like, "Fuck, yeah."

I agree it more a Tom/Joey than anything more compartmentalized who comes home at the end. The pain, the haunted look in Viggo's eyes, that's not something that is Tom, who wouldn't have had the reason to feel it. And that is the way it has to be.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Brilliant and insightful analysis -- more than I could do after seeing three films and having a dog/skunk encounter at the end.

One other thought for the scene at the end.

During the hot cheerleader scene, and after, Tom talks about knowing that she loved him by the look in her eyes, and still seeing that look. She says "I still love you." At the end, she sits, eyes down, and then looks up. And Entwife and I debated the ambiguity of the look on his face at the end of the film--is he seeing that she does not love him any more? Or that she does? Or what? It's a brilliant moment, and then bringing the black screen down on it is amazing.

I didn't expect to like the film, and I don't think I like it in a fannish sense, but I sure as hell appreciated it more than I thought, just for the brilliant stuff you point out above.

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. Dog/skunk encounter not good. Was anyone sprayed or just a close encounter?

Mmmm, the ending... Yes... I think that they avoid eye contact because he doesn't want to see that she doesn't love him, and I think that she is afraid to show him that she does. I think that's what her breaking down when she lies to the sheriff to protect him says. I think that's what the waiting plate says. After all, he didn't have to come back. If it was all a lie he was living, he wouldn't have to come back.

However, the knowledge that she does still love him knowing what he is, what he is capable of, that is a terrible thing. A powerful and wonderful thing too, but terrible as well.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

We think the skunk was hit by car -- since the almost ten year old chubby arthritic black lab with only one eye "caught" it (in the dark) -- so there was some skunky smell, but it was not a full fledged spraying by any means. He was shaking the heck out of something (it was dark so I couldn't see much beyond movement). So a couple of smelly dogs, but not too bad.

I think what's brilliant is the ambiguity of the ending--a textbook case of two alternative/opposing ends both being ones that could be supported from the text.

And both are powerful in different ways.

[travelingcarrot.livejournal.com]

You also have to factor into those looks the sadness in both their eyes that nothing will be the same again. Even though he's done what he had to do to close the book of his previous life and washed his hands of it, now he can't pretend to himself that Joey is dead or to his family that Joey never existed. He's come back, and I think she's going to let him stay because she does still love him, but they have to start all over again.

[escribej.livejournal.com]

I agree with ithiliana and nikkie -- an excellent analysis. I saw this with two friends and we debated for a while Tom/Joey's true nature and came to the conclusion he is both men. He is the man who can feel terror for his family's safety and then ... toward the end... take an action where family ... well, he does the complete opposite.

Ithiliana -- now I'm going to go back and watch the ending more closely. :) Do her eyes say she still loves him or not? Is that what he's looking for?

BTW, was William Hurt the best or what?

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

BTW, was William Hurt the best or what?

Oh, yes. I love William Hurt most of the time, but he was astonishingly wonderful in this film.

He is the man who can feel terror for his family's safety and then ... toward the end... take an action where family ... well, he does the complete opposite.

Yes, which shows both how like and unlike Richie Joey really is.

Do her eyes say she still loves him or not? Is that what he's looking for?

*points up to response to ithiliana* I think that they say that she does, but that the knowledge doesn't bring her a great deal of comfort.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I have to see it again myself! Because it's so ambiguous (and yes Hurt was incredible!) -- the whole film is so brilliant I'd have to watch it multiple times and think about it much more to be saying anything more than my original response. The ending is insanely brilliant -- a real risk, one that won't be appreciated by many (my students hate ambiguity, hate open-ended texts, the poor dears). (And Howard Shore did the music!)

[nikkie222.livejournal.com]

I couldn't tell what her look meant. I think he was looking for that, was afraid of what he would see. I think she was afraid, too. She finally was able to raise her head and look at him, but as to what he saw, I think that's meant to be ambiguous.

It was a powerful ending, a scene of several minutes with no dialogue. Incredible. One reviewer said it was the most horrific ending of Cronenberg's career, which is saying a lot considering his movies.

I've been reading reactions to the movie. On IMDB, a lot of people hated it, some walked out; they're insulting each other over there. I'm enjoying the Viggo-Works discussion board on the movie. People are either going to "get it" (the deliberate way Cronenberg set up everything: the cute little family, the way the town is set up, the dialogue, etc., so that you watch the facade get ripped away) or they're going to misunderstand it. I understand why the critics like it; I can also understand why some people won't like it if they're going just for a shoot 'em up movie based on the title.

I thought it was a fascinating character-driven movie. I would have liked it without Viggo, although I can't imagine who would have been able to play that character as well as he did. When his eyes changed in his front yard to that cold blue steel, I got chills.

[savageseraph.livejournal.com]

I skimmed the stuff on the IMDB movie boards last night. It seems that people loved it or hated it, not much in the middle, and I think that the people who didn't like it, didn't really get it. In a very big way. I can understand how people would find it disquieting, but the folks who don't like it don't seem to focus on that, only on how boring it was, how they wanted to fall asleep. Oh, and let's not forget how graphically violent (Hello? Did they see the trailer? Look at the title? Know anything about Cronenberg?) and pornographic (*rolls eyes*) it was.

One reviewer said it was the most horrific ending of Cronenberg's career, which is saying a lot considering his movies.

I can see why s/he'd say that. It's so realistic, takes in the full impact of all that has happened in the film. I so need to see it again.

When his eyes changed in his front yard to that cold blue steel, I got chills.

Hell, yes! YES!!!