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Right from the start of A History of Violence, David Cronenberg
makes it clear that the nightmares his characters dream are
inseparable from their reality. You can run but you can’t hide,
that’s what Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) discovers after a
spontaneous act of heroism. Based on a graphic novel by Jack Wagner
and Vince Locke, Cronenberg directs his scenes in a style which
evokes the graphic novel’s storyboard panels as well as its laconic
and often-cliched dialogue. There’s an intentional slowness to the
film’s start, as if to suggest the placid surfaces of a smug
quotidian existence in Millbrook, Indiana, where Stall lives with
his wife, Edie (Maria Bello), and their two children, Jack and
Sarah. Particularly with the scenes set at Jack’s high school,
Cronenberg seems to be juxtaposing the platitudes of an after-school
t.v. special with the archetypes of the teenage slasher film. High
school bullies and serial killers lurk around every corner – and
it’s not long before the man in black (Ed Harris as Carl Fogarty,
complete with a wandering dead eye in milky-blue) stalks our hero’s
every move. Splattered with blood and guts, the film is nonetheless
primarily concerned with familial relationships under the strain of
violence. When the lies of the past come home to roost, is there
room enough for forgiveness? Or more specifically, once your front
lawn is littered with bodies, can you trust the man in your bed?
Cronenberg seems to believe that even so you can still get a good
night’s sleep. |
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