Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

Who knew the end of 2005 would usher in a slew of intelligent and artistic films examining the manifold implications of violence? Paradise Now and Munich viewed violence in the Middle East with probing questions on its ultimate efficacy in achieving one’s ends. Capote looked back to the America of 1960s and a brutal murder that rocked a small town in Kansas and effectively sealed the reputation of Truman Capote who cannily capitalized on the tragedy in his seminal true crime novel, In Cold Blood. Ang Lee’s magisterial Brokeback Mountain, expanding on Annie Proulx’ prescient and brilliant short story, turned its eye to the same period (well, 1963 to 1983), for a love story framed and punctuated by violence against same sex partnerships.

On smaller, more domestic scales, we had films like Woody Allen’s Match Point, a streamlined thriller that ponders what it means (on existential levels) to “get away with” murder; what is violence in a world without absolute morality, and in a system of seemingly arbitrary chance or dumb luck? And then we have two kindred spirits: Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) and David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, films so oddly similar in their implications (despite some obvious narrative divergences) that their titles are perfectly interchangeable. Each film centers on that great, perennial battleground, the family, each patriarch a “man with a past” whose earlier acts of violence may now not only be coming back to haunt him but may serve to destroy the family. That may signal the karmic epitaph of the season’s violent-themed movies: You reap what you sow or Sooner or later, the chickens come home to roost.

Caché (Hidden) has far wider implications than its immediate and concrete story (these including the complacency of the colonizing nation to the colonized), and so does A History of Violence. Cronenberg examines with metaphysical precision the themes of bullying and of vicarious pleasure in the violent demise of people who commit violent acts against innocents. Set in a prototypically quaint and small town in the mid-West, the film subtly gets under the skin, drawing us in with disarmingly seductive style until our own (or speaking for myself, my own) visceral reactions frighteningly egg on the violent deaths or injury of the bad guys, small fry and big player alike.

Of course, we are placed in similar positions as viewers of countless other films artistic and otherwise, no matter how stylized, realistic, or abstract. Think of the joy we feel at the comeuppance of Zod (and for that matter, the bully in the diner) from Superman 2, to name one of the more innocuous examples of audience complicity in violent reprisals. From that PG cartoon world to the R-rated one of Sin City, and from any of a thousand westerns and vigilante films (to name just two of the dozens of genres involved), we are constantly beckoned to react with complicity and zeal at the annihilation of evil forces.

What sets this film apart? In many respects, it is the artistry and uncompromising exploration of the topic by director David Cronenberg. Known both for his earlier “body horror” films as well as more recent psychological horror films, in addition to a number of projects difficult to categorize at all (e.g. eXistenZ and Naked Lunch), Cronenberg like David Lynch has always approached graphic or disturbing physical and psychological themes with a combination of intellectual curiosity, a connoisseurship of the grotesque, and a wryly deadpan humor. For all his signature explorations of bodies grafted with machines, genetic mutations, and the blurry line between objective and subjective realities, A History of Violence strikes one as almost un-Cronenbergian in its polished, straightforward narrative about a small-town family man with a possible big-city mob history. The double entendre title brilliantly alludes to the specific man’s questionable past (does he have a history of violence?) while serving as an emblem of the larger, essayistic theme, as if to say, “Let us examine how violence starts, what are its repercussions, who is effected?”

What I love about the film is its deft blurring of innocence and experience. To take one instance, a husband-and-wife sex scene early on in the film is notable for its sweetness, the vaguely dirty yet corny role-playing of cheerleader and football hero that exemplifies a trusting and loving couple still finding novelty. Flash forward to a parallel scene late in the film; without giving anything away, suffice to say it is a complete reversal of the former idyll, a rough battle suggesting the inexorable draw the wife has to violence, despite her outward signs of disgust. Another twisted progression from innocence to experience that the film follows is that of the scrawny son from victim of a bully to something altogether more frightening.

I’ve said very little about the plot, and if you haven’t seen the film, you’ll thank me for that. The film works beyond its philosophical exploration as a pure thriller, putting the family on the battlefront much the way Cape Fear (either version) does. There is much in the way of visceral thrill, healthy and perhaps unhealthy schadenfreud and delight in the graphic expunging of bad guys, and brilliant acting, music, and photography all around. Prepare to laugh in discomfort, nervousness, and all around shock both at the stuff on the screen and in your gut.

4.3 out of 5 stars


Note: I saw this a while back in the theaters, but the theatrical category for this film is already gone. This is more to say I have no clue about the DVD bonuses and quality.

Recommended: Yes