History of Violence
"A History of Violence" (directed by David Cronenburg) joined the meager but potent ranks of one of my own favorite personal cinematic categories: movies I've walked out on. In fact, there have only been two.*
My theater experience (and the wake it left) speak more to the nature of reviewers than to the film. Afterall, there are countless films released every year which rely on poor writing, delivered at break-neck speed by atypically poor acting. (One wonders exactly how they tortured Ed Harris, Maria Bello, and Viggo Mortensen into their zombie-like interpretation of suburban folks.) The plot is thin. The characters are not complex enough to be human or significant enough to be symbolic and the writing tastes like a very short introduction to crime lite.
Take it easy? It's just an action film? Right, ok. I know, I know, it is a genre in which one expects little criticism, little analysis, and a fair amount of narcissistic misogyny. You think I shouldn't expect more from this type of film? You think, if I have a penchant for the philosophical I should stay the fuck out of the action arena? Ok, ok, say for a moment I forgive the quality of the film and accept it as a traditional low-brow romp through gore... Even IF one allows it that excuse there is one critical scene in which the film leaves the realm of bad movies and enters into covert, indoctrinating text.
What the blurbs don't mention and the reviewers seem to gloss is the rape sequence. The self-perpetuating danger of this oversight shocked me. Maybe I have an unrealistically positive expectation for filmmakers, actors, reviewers, mainstream men, etc. Naive? I don't think so. In the scene Viggo Mortensen's character (Tom/Joey) brutally subdues his wife, Edie (Maria Bello) after she repeatedly kicks and punches him while running up the stairs. Movie-goers are meant to infer consent from the rough but perhaps "consentual" kissing that follows.
The fact that it passes as violence without being "sexual violence" is the really disgusting part. Forget being uncritical of rape, the film is downright ignorant. Through his casual inclusion of the scene, Cronenburg effectively reinforces nonconsentual sex between spouses. The fillm simply transitions from the attempted escape to sex. It gives a hearty pat on the back to sexual predators, suggesting they should keep at it, (afterall, Cronenburg seems to say) by the time one commits the crime, the victim will realize that it was ACTUALLY what they wanted.
For those who confront these traumas daily, it questions normalcy. To the subdued other, the film questions will and desire, saying, "give in, you know you want it, you're getting what you secretly crave." Violating female autonomy while catering to the expectation that a history of sex promises a future, he sells rape as rough sex. He provides yet another case of needless and harmful conflation of these two distinct acts.
The only cinematic trick here is Cronenburg's greying of an already perilously murky boundary for seemingly innocent predators, which he does by shifting the burden of perpetual defense to the victim. As if that weren't bad enough, he at the same time reproduces another dangerous sexual paradigm for those who may have been or will be similiarly confronted with violent crime. Cronenburg portrays Edie as eventually "conquered" without being unhappy, adding to his fantasy of misogyny. With consideration to it's abstract purpose, the film fails to stir a brain cell about crime, psyche, and violence to the average viewer. The particular danger the film poses is by passing as mundane while perpetuating dangerous ideas about violence and power.
As a crime text, the film does little more than implicitly and explicitly reify a long-standing and accepted history of violence. To Cronenberg, brutality is fact, desire is unimportant, and trauma and criminality do not exist.
*I'm starting here only because some cinema purists would invalidate my opinion for only getting half-way in. However, after reading countless reviews of the film, I rediscovered that most cinema purists are misogynist, idiot, fuck-wits.
My theater experience (and the wake it left) speak more to the nature of reviewers than to the film. Afterall, there are countless films released every year which rely on poor writing, delivered at break-neck speed by atypically poor acting. (One wonders exactly how they tortured Ed Harris, Maria Bello, and Viggo Mortensen into their zombie-like interpretation of suburban folks.) The plot is thin. The characters are not complex enough to be human or significant enough to be symbolic and the writing tastes like a very short introduction to crime lite.
Take it easy? It's just an action film? Right, ok. I know, I know, it is a genre in which one expects little criticism, little analysis, and a fair amount of narcissistic misogyny. You think I shouldn't expect more from this type of film? You think, if I have a penchant for the philosophical I should stay the fuck out of the action arena? Ok, ok, say for a moment I forgive the quality of the film and accept it as a traditional low-brow romp through gore... Even IF one allows it that excuse there is one critical scene in which the film leaves the realm of bad movies and enters into covert, indoctrinating text.
What the blurbs don't mention and the reviewers seem to gloss is the rape sequence. The self-perpetuating danger of this oversight shocked me. Maybe I have an unrealistically positive expectation for filmmakers, actors, reviewers, mainstream men, etc. Naive? I don't think so. In the scene Viggo Mortensen's character (Tom/Joey) brutally subdues his wife, Edie (Maria Bello) after she repeatedly kicks and punches him while running up the stairs. Movie-goers are meant to infer consent from the rough but perhaps "consentual" kissing that follows.
The fact that it passes as violence without being "sexual violence" is the really disgusting part. Forget being uncritical of rape, the film is downright ignorant. Through his casual inclusion of the scene, Cronenburg effectively reinforces nonconsentual sex between spouses. The fillm simply transitions from the attempted escape to sex. It gives a hearty pat on the back to sexual predators, suggesting they should keep at it, (afterall, Cronenburg seems to say) by the time one commits the crime, the victim will realize that it was ACTUALLY what they wanted.
For those who confront these traumas daily, it questions normalcy. To the subdued other, the film questions will and desire, saying, "give in, you know you want it, you're getting what you secretly crave." Violating female autonomy while catering to the expectation that a history of sex promises a future, he sells rape as rough sex. He provides yet another case of needless and harmful conflation of these two distinct acts.
The only cinematic trick here is Cronenburg's greying of an already perilously murky boundary for seemingly innocent predators, which he does by shifting the burden of perpetual defense to the victim. As if that weren't bad enough, he at the same time reproduces another dangerous sexual paradigm for those who may have been or will be similiarly confronted with violent crime. Cronenburg portrays Edie as eventually "conquered" without being unhappy, adding to his fantasy of misogyny. With consideration to it's abstract purpose, the film fails to stir a brain cell about crime, psyche, and violence to the average viewer. The particular danger the film poses is by passing as mundane while perpetuating dangerous ideas about violence and power.
As a crime text, the film does little more than implicitly and explicitly reify a long-standing and accepted history of violence. To Cronenberg, brutality is fact, desire is unimportant, and trauma and criminality do not exist.
*I'm starting here only because some cinema purists would invalidate my opinion for only getting half-way in. However, after reading countless reviews of the film, I rediscovered that most cinema purists are misogynist, idiot, fuck-wits.
posted by RNovack at 2:18 AM
3 Comments:
The shot of Tom/ Joey in the stairwell is perhaps Cronenberg’s most telling attempt to firmly ally the sympathies of the audience with Tom’s suffering male body, rather than with the woman who, though scarred and violated, is still to be read as a cold and withholding bitch; what transpires after the rape, however, reiterates and reinforces that impression.
Recall how Tom grabs Edie’s ankle again, after she extricates herself from him after he brutalizes her; if he lets go (and he does) we’re meant to infer that he’s actually a good man – just as his moment of hesitation during the rape is also meant to exonerate him for his brutality. The shot of Tom in the stairwell follows upon this exchange, and is colored by her “rejection” of him—which does nothing, incidentally, to secure her any autonomy.
Ditto the scene in which we see Tom sitting hangdog at the edge of their marital bed (he’s remorseful, see?), and Maria Bello exits the bathroom wearing some pornpgraphic looking short white silk robe, open; she's completely naked beneath it, and she stands for a moment so Tom (who's just raped her, remember) can contemplate her nakedness (and presumably so we, and Cronenberg, can contemplate it as well). Tom looks at her in a way that I think is meant to be full of love and apology; she gives him a cold stare (that unforgiving bitch! she wanted it!) and leaves the room.
Then it's night, and we see that, upstairs, Maria Bello's lying facedown in bed. The camera contemplates the scrapes and bruising all over her back. Cut to poor friendless Tom sleeping on the couch (since the bitch exiled him from the marital bed); our sympathies, once more, are with him.
You'd have to be an infant with a head injury to find anything like a moral challenge in this film, which has a vision of crime and violence which wouldn't begin to tax the average reader of the NY Post... It's telling how lugubriously flatfooted, dull, and uninspired the direction is, save for those moments in which Cronenberg can make himself hard by violating Maria Bello's body with his camera, or when spattering its lens with gore.
“Violencia gratuita,” incidentally, is gratuitous. Perhaps you think it’s Latin. It’s not.
Oh honey.
There are those who simply can't be helped.
the reference only matters if it says anything at all; like the rest of your message (written in a style which can only be described as an affront to the English language), it doesn't.
It's too bad you can't bear to entertain the idea that you are in error.
But go ahead, by all means: remain there.
you know, even in my most pronounced academic horror film period i could never bring myself to deal with Cronenberg. the abdominal videoplayer/vagina (videogina?) in "Videodrome" pretty much did it for me, which is why I have avoided this film like the plague.
thank you, max, for seeing half of this film so that i don't have to.
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