A History of Violence

So the girls and I went out last night for dinner and a movie. It took a while to find a movie we could all agree on, since we tend to have different tastes. And since I am *really* not interested in North Country (which looks to me like a typical Lifetime, spoonfeeding, gorgeous star-in-a-mullet movie), they were willing to compromise to see my top choice, A History of Violence. I do appreciate their willingness to go along for the ride. ;-)

The basic premise of the movie is this: Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is an upstanding pillar of the community, running a small diner in a quaint little Indiana town. When 2 homicidal drifters roll into town and cause a scene in the diner, Tom takes them down with surprising ease, becoming a local hero. His picture is flashed all over the news, cuz everyone loves a small-town hero. Suddenly, three mobsters from Philadelphia (Ed Harris and 2 flunkies) show up in the diner and start calling Tom by another name, leading to a series of events that call into question Tom's identity and motives. It's a bit of a suspense story and also a drama about a family in crisis, focusing on how events affect Tom's wife Edie (Maria Bello) and their teenage son.

After the movie, the 3 of us had very mixed reactions. I liked it, but had a few criticisms. My friends didn't really care for it, but I hope that with the conversation we had afterward we all can appreciate what the movie was trying to do. Reactions/comments, in no particular order:

1. The violence in the movie is very real. When someone is shot, it's not a clean, pretty scene. There's no quick cut away, it actually shows what a bullet would do to someone's face, or skull, or chest. Even though I was one of the people gasping and hiding my eyes in my turtleneck during most of these scenes, I get it. I get why the director (David Cronenberg) included those gory images. This is a movie about violence, about what it takes for a person to really be able to inflict horrible pain or death upon another person and still be able to live with it. They couldn't show a usual movie scene, with special effects and music cues, and still get the audience to understand the horror of what violence is.

2. A lot has been written about the 2 fairly graphic sex scenes between Tom and Edie. As we discussed it afterwards, it seemed like the point of these (esp. the 2nd one) was to show that passion and violence are often very related, 2 sides of the same coin.

3. The combination of sex and violence means that this was NOT a family-friendly film. MCB's comment as we walked out was "Stef, remember when we saw Hannibal and decided that was a terrible movie for parents to bring their kids to? This was worse." We were all appalled at the woman a few rows ahead of us who had her small child with her. At one point during the movie, I think after a particularly graphic scene, I heard the kid yell out "Mommy, I want a hot dog!" MCB heard "Mommy, I want to leave this place!" It was so inappropriate for a child to be seeing this.

4. My biggest complaint about the movie was a cameo appearance by William Hurt. He was horribly, horribly, horribly miscast. I can see why he would want to do the role, cuz it was a juicy, scene-chewing, vanity role for someone like him. But he was not good. You couldn't figure out the tone of his character and he was just smarmy and not believable.

5. On the other hand, I loved the teenage son. He brought a lot of the humor and humanity to the movie, and it was a pretty difficult role. He was played by a young actor named Ashton Holmes.

6. Like I said, overall, I liked the movie. It falls into a certain genre of films that I really enjoy. AS and I were trying to figure out how to categorize this genre, of minimalist, spare, usually independent dramas. They tend to be very character and story-driven, and don't have flashy special effects or a feel-good soundtrack. Movies like Junebug, or You Can Count on Me, or In the Bedroom. I think of these movies as being "under-produced" in a good way. The best term I can come up with to describe them is "acoustic" - movies, unplugged.