I believe that when people look back at the movies of 2005 and are as puzzled by how "Crash" was voted "best picture" by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science as we now are looking back to 1952 and scratching our heads about "The Greatest Shown on Earth" (another surprise pick of another multi-star movie and another of the relatively few instances in which the director of the supposed "best picture" was not judged best director), "A History of Violence" will be regarded as a much better than the supposed "best picture" was (as "A Quiet Man" or "The Lavender Hill Mob" of "Singin' in the Rain" or "Rashômon" from 1952 releases now are).

That was, I am well aware, quite a topic sentence! IMO, the Oscar for best screenplay that went to Paul Haggis for "Crash" is even more dubious (OK, outrageous) than the best picture choice. Of the many dubious "best picture" choices of the Academy, "The Greatest Show on Earth" is a particularly apt analog, since it also picked up an undeserved writing award. But I come not to bury "Crash," but to praise "A History of Violence."

"A History of Violence" has a very splendid ensemble cast (albeit less famous than the "Crash" cast), though it also also has a central figure, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen ["The Lord of the Rings" and The Indian Runner prefiguring the two sides of his character]). He is a man of few words (in the Gary Cooper mold). He and his son try to defuse tense situations and avoid violence. Given the title and the director (David Cronenberg), I don't think that it is much of a plot spoiler to reveal that violence does erupt.

I am, perhaps, too accustomed to graphic violence after years of watching "The Sopranos," "NYPD Blue," Hong Kong movies made by Wong Kaiwar and John Woo (and, earlier, the movies of Sam Peckinpah, and, earlier this week, Tsotsi, which has one scene very similar to a crucial one in "Histor"). The sudden bursts of extreme violence out of domestic tranquillity in "A History of Violence" are particularly reminiscent of Takashi Kitano's "Fireworks," which also has a gentle and laconic protagonist who wants to avoid violence, but, when it is inevitable, is very efficient in inflicting it.

Viewers allergic to graphic violence should avoid this movie, OK? That is, I think, is the the audience that would be most disturbed by the complicity with the male Stalls when they defend themselves from the swaggering bullies. The violence in these instances is intense, but not incommensurate with the threats: the three times that the response is to being about to be killed, the response is lethal. In the other one, the threat is not lethal and the response is in kind.

Some have also objected to the sex in the movie. There is hardly any nudity, and it is notable that the sex scenes (all two of them) are between husband and wife. Both of them seem to me to reveal a great deal about the characters and their relationship (and how it has changed). The one that disturbs those who are not outraged by married couples having sex, like much of the rest of the movie, is "about" complicity in violence, and immediately follows a very crucial scene in which Edie Stall (Maria Bello[The Cooler, Thank You for Smoking]) has rallied to stand by her man (though she is attorney, so that it is not completely clear whether she is playing dutiful wife or defense attorney). Maria Bello shows a mix of solidarity and disgust and excitement and disgust very, very well, while Viggo Mortensen alternates between sad guilt and aggressiveness. It is a bruising scene (literally, apparently, and bruising both emotionally and physically). It is also absolutely indispensable.

Indeed, there is hardly anything that is dispensable or false in the movie. There is a brief flash of the inside of Maria Bello's robe that seems gratuitous, and what Jack Stall (Ashton Holmes) says to his father when Tom returns (for the second time) from the hospital does not seem right (I mean to fit the characters and their relationship, however uneasy it has been) to me. (However, it follows a scene of bravura acting between Mortensen immobile in a hospital bed and Bello all but bouncing off the walls that is one of many great scenes in the movie. And there is an earlier discussion between father and son of how the family solves problems that is both very funny and the most incisive exchange of lines in the movie.)

There are many more brilliantly executed scenes in the movie. The scenes of understated skepticism of Sheriff Sam Carney (back in uniform after being a plainclothes detective on "Queer as Folk") with Tom and Edie and with the very sinister gangster Fogarty played by Ed Harris seem to me especially deserving of praise. The opening four-minute tracking shot reveals so much with so little dialogue (even if I mistook it as a prophetic dream of the young Stall daughter, since she wakes up screaming after it). The final scene (I should have gone back and checked its duration!) says even more without a spoken line (the decisive moments are moving plates on the dining table). The confrontations that lead to violence and the ones that only hint at it (Edie and Fogarty in the mall) are tense and revealing.

Plot Spoiler Alert

The Ontario locales (Millbrook, Ontario serving as Millbrook, Indiana, Toronto as Philadelphia) work well (as Manitoba locations worked for Kansas ones in "Capote").

Although if I were giving a best supporting actor award for a member of the "History of Violence" cast, William Hurt would be my fourth choice, his role as the older brother of Viggo Mortensen's character (how carefully I read, even within a plot spoiler-warned section!) is interestingly conceived. The accent does not sound either Irish or Philadelphia to me, and there is some of the "Look at me act! Aren't I a smashingly good actor?" glee coming from William Hurt that has annoyed me in other parts (but which may be preferable to his earnestness, as, for instance in The Plague). Unlike Ed Harris's character (or Mortensen's!), Hurt's is not good with guns. He seems to me more than a little buffoonish, but his curiosity about his little brother's life in the two decades since last they saw each other is an interesting concept and well-played by Hurt (and by Mortensen with minimal responses).

While I'm in the protection of a plot-spoiling alert, I also want to mention the satisfying parallels between the bullies underestimating those trying to keep the peace. This gives the Stalls an advantage of surprise, even with Fogarty's henchmen, if not with Fogarty. And the older brother estimates the younger one, as older brothers tend to do, and is unable to finish the business that began in the crib... This brought to mind a number of westerns, particularly those with James Stewart, including the legend that was preferred and printed in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" and most of the Anthony Mann westerns with Stewart. If it is not obvious, I think that Viggo Mortensen's performance was outstanding and should at least have been in contention for acting awards.

End plot-spoiler alert

With only one false(falsish?) note, the writing and enactment is brilliant. A lot is said with relatively few words, particularly by Mortensen, but also by the rest of the cast. (I can't resist juxtaposing that with the multiple phoninesses and contrived coincidence of "Crash"!)

For me, David Cronenberg has been a director who sometimes hits and more often misses, but who usually attempts to do interesting things. In "A History of Violence," what he showed and what he chose not to show seem exactly right to me. (I know something about what he chose not to show from his interesting commentary track and from discussion of a deleted scene in two bonus features.)

The music of Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings, Spider, Silence of the Lambs) never overwhelms what is being shown, and there is no music in some places that it would be pounding or swelling in other thriller movies.

Cronenberg wanted an Edward Hopper look that his recurrent cinematographer Peter Suschitzky brilliantly supplied. (In addition to many Cronenberg movies, Suschitzky also shot "The Empire Strikes Back" and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.) Like Shore and Suschitzky, editor Ron Sanders has worked on a succession of Cronenberg movies, and the tightness of the movie must be credited to Sanders as well as to Cronenberg.

DVD extras are plentiful. The most important is Cronenberg's commentary track, which is more focused on theme than technique. There is (typically perverse Cronenberg?) making-of featurette of a deleted (dream) scene that is absorbing. Plus a lightly sardonic documentary about taking the movie to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival (Cronenberg seems to be better appreciated in France than in the US, and had won a jury special prize at Cannes in 1996 for a movie titled "Crash.") The differences between the North American and European releases are slight (with no difference in running time) and are juxtaposed on a split screen.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD