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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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