A History of Violence

 

Director David Cronenberg on the set

Cronenberg with Viggo Mortensen

Cronenberg with Mortensen and Monica Bello

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE                      A-                                                                             USA  Germany  (96 mi)  2005  d: David Cronenberg

This might be a good time to re-examine an earlier work of Viggo Mortensen in this David Cronenberg film.  One of the most versatile directors working in cinema today, pioneering the body horror sub-genre into the mainstream, finding subtext in the strangest places in order to uncover our true nature, typically depicted with a pronounced visual flair, earning a great deal of commercial success while exploring deeply unsettling philosophical ramifications.  His first Hollywood studio feature since the 1980’s, adapted from an obscure graphic novel, this may be the most mainstream film of his career, yet also one of the most subversive, both celebrating and deconstructing the American Dream.  The film was almost universally praised, listed as the #1 best film of the year by Amy Taubin from The Village Voice, Amy Taubin: 1987-2005 and J. Hoberman from The Village Voice in 2005, #2 by Cahiers du Cinéma magazine in 2005, and #3 by Jonathan Rosenbaum in 2005.  The Village Voice’s annual poll by critics and film writers named it the best picture of 2005 by the widest margin in their history, joining a long list of cutting edge directors who previously claimed this distinction, Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich (1999), David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001), Todd Haynes’ FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002), Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), and Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset (2004), with Cronenberg also named best director in the same poll, suggesting the film is part of the pervasive American culture.  Set in a small, predominantly rural, all-white community in Indiana, part of America’s heartland, which suggests an idyllic existence, or a place out of time, a town of “nice people,” according to the sheriff, but part of a delusional portrait of an idealized America, where the opening sequence exemplifies the director’s command of the medium, a masterful long shot that is all mood with a precise malevolent tone, including outrageous shades of dark humor, as Cronenberg does with this film what Eastwood failed to do in MYSTIC RIVER (2003), which is to establish, at the core of this film, believability.  A mix of postmodern sensibilities and arthouse aspirations, the film successfully straddles the line between a thriller and an art film, where it’s intriguing how Cronenberg wordlessly connects between characters as well as the audience, using complex layers that make it difficult to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, as many of the evil characters never cross the line of out and out criminal behavior, while many of the righteous and good characters do cross that line, yet for understandable motives.  The question is whether the lead protagonist can renounce violence and forge a new identity, with the film hinting he cannot, as his violent past comes back to haunt the present, reverting to his old ways to save and protect his family, where the primitive violence is very intimate and physical, with the viewing audience becoming complicit in the violence as well, as we identify with the emotional turmoil the characters’ face, which necessitates a kind of moral accounting for that desire for violence, becoming a snapshot of America coming of age in the shadows of violence, with Cronenberg holding a mirror up to society.  They appear to resemble the crises of ordinary people, especially as the attackers are so evil and callous, so we have to accept the consequences, though there are also indications that he has finally cleansed himself of that violence in order to be integrated back into his family, expressed through a family dinner scene, as he’s invited to rejoin the family for a classic Midwestern meal of meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  

With bad guys on the loose, almost in the abstract, the film changes gears and zeroes in on a typical loving family somewhere in small-town Indiana, where Tom, Viggo Mortensen, an aw-shucks everyday kind of guy who runs a Main Street diner, with Monica Bello as Edie, his loving and supportive wife, with two kids, a befuddled teenage boy Jack (Ashton Holmes) who is the victim of a high school bully in a letter jacket and what looks like a cute but over-pampered blond, curly-haired, 6-year old daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes).  In this film there are no bizarre locales, and no over-stylizations, but it does express violence as an organic phenomenon, drawing on the Western and the gangster genres in order to achieve new levels of consciousness.  The rhythm of life is established and broken when the bad guys enter the diner and get their lunch handed to them by soft-spoken, mild mannered Tom, a stand-in for Clark Kent, who saves the day and is instantly turned into a reluctant hero, where the shift from hero to vigilante happens in an instant, as does the shift from professional killer to American hero, in this case viewed as one and the same.  We are reminded that women and children everywhere live with men who are killers, as they live with men who were soldiers, who did what they had to do during wartime.  Living with killers is not a difficulty, but only becomes troubling when that killing is not sanctioned by a larger purpose.  Mortensen is an actor who can play large or small with equal skill.  Amid a growing sense of paranoia and fear, causing him to remark at one point, “I think I’m losing my mind,” a strange tale of double identity is unfolding.  On the surface, he appears to be an all-American family man, allowing Cronenberg to exploit prevalent themes that occur throughout much of his work, namely, the way things appear can be deceptive, and the idea that normal conventions we use in our everyday lives can be highly dubious.  The director engages in philosophical questions of order and disorder, which can be unclear, especially in the context of our uncertainty in the world around us, yet there’s something deeply unsettling in the way Cronenberg shows how notions of deception can be tied to our own identity.  With various forces of deception undercutting the prevailing reality, Cronenberg makes us question ideas we have about who we are.  Despite his undesired popularity, more bad guys arrive in the form of Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who is missing one eye, and attributes its loss to Tom, who he recognizes as gangster Joey Cusack from the old neighborhood in Philly, a revelation that exposes the monstrosity of his former life which threatens the stability of his marriage when Edie discovers who he really is, where this violent past continues to pose a threat lurking over the present even after the film is over.  Harris stalks him, very much like the high school bully that continues to pick on the son, until all hell break loose in each case, where the situation is resolved through unintended violence, but it gets the job done.  Or does it?  As there’s more bad guys where they came from.  Violence only leads to more violence, which sometimes seems like the only way, as without it, innocent individuals would continue be victimized and harmed, so at the very least, we understand and are willing to accept its place in our society, all precipitated here by seething male anger. 

Interesting that Cronenberg establishes some healthy marital sex, even after twenty years of marriage, which adds credibility to the vulnerability of the characters.  We see them when no one is looking, and they maintain their interest and intellect.  There are extended scenes of morally questionable sex balanced against extreme violence and death.  The complexity of Monica Bello’s performance is stunning, bewildered at the enormity of his deceit, remaining fierce and independent, yet she’s nearly raped by her husband with rough sex on the stairs, who turns into a monster to defend his family.  Again, this borders on rape, though the sex is consensual, despite elements of force, where we see her back is badly bruised afterwards, prompting Tom to ask jokingly, “What have you done with my wife?”  Turning into something else entirely, this movie is about an outsider suppressing the more grotesque excesses of his bloody past to fit into mainstream American life, where this newfound knowledge of her husband’s violent past unleashes new behaviors and emotions in her, which may as well be a metaphor for the film – unintended consequences.  As Tom has to come to terms with Joey, and all the ramifications of his so-called controlled violence, so too does his family and his town, as they’re all interconnected.  Summoned back to Philadelphia by his crime boss brother, Richie Cusack (William Hurt), who bluntly acknowledges “You’re living the American dream.  You really bought into it, didn’t you?” yet it is also a day of reckoning, in the very worst way, forcing him to deal with it in the only language the criminal underworld understands, extreme violence, which is jarring to say the least, but he didn’t exactly have much of an alternative, becoming a very real and unavoidable part of human existence.  This violent side disrupts the idyllic harmony of small town life in America, where everything is safe and good, a stark contrast to the violent lifestyle in the cities, where the apparent tension is a factor throughout the film, with both sides imperceptibly blending into one another without our noticing, offering redemptive possibilities.  The nauseating acts of violence are brutal, but not gratuitous, establishing the world as a dangerous place, and is juxtaposed against the innocence of Tom’s daughter awaking from a horrible dream with shadow monsters, which is clearly meant to subvert the world established by the film.  There is a brilliant and elegant pace and style throughout, economical and spare, without a single wasted frame, using Howard Shore music that sounds like Aaron Copland in Our Town, pure understated small town Americana, prideful, even heroic, yet mourning a faraway loss or regret, a reminder that death is a fundamental fabric of small town life.  An essential question this film asks is whether a person is allowed forgiveness for an immoral past after he demonstrates a genuinely reformed character and a willingness to live in society peacefully and even benevolently, but does not make legal reparations for specific crimes?  Cronenberg’s wordless interplay is astonishing, particularly at the end, which remains so ambiguous, played without dialogue, wondering who this man really is, questions that also gnaw at his family.  Is this film about the moral redemption of Tom, or about the moral downfall of his family?  More specifically, it asks us to consider the cost that must be paid to maintain the family as the moral center of the United States.  Americans have a long history of violence, suggesting we secretly crave what we publicly condemn, where the film may be less about forgiving and more about forgetting, questioning how many lies can we absorb to still remain true to ourselves?  

Body Heat

 

Writer/director Lawrence Kasdan

Kathleen Turner and William Hurt

Kasdan and Kathleen Turner

BODY HEAT             A                                                                                                                  USA  (113 mi)  1981  d: Lawrence Kasdan

Ned is caught in limbo, in a dream.  I wanted this film to have the intricate structure of a dream, the density of a good novel, and the texture of recognizable people in extraordinary circumstances.        —Lawrence Kasdan, quoted by Richard Corliss from Time magazine, August 24, 1981, Cinema: Torrid Movie, Hot New Star 

The debut film for both Kasdan and Kathleen Turner, this is a sweaty entry into the heat-oppressed, neo-noir landscape, joining films like J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (1962), Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), John Huston’s CHINATOWN (1974), and Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975). While comparisons are aptly made to Double Indemnity (1944), with Turner playing the Barbara Stanwyck femme fatale, yet perhaps going further to an even darker place, it actually opens just like  Out of the Past (1947), with William Hurt playing the Robert Mitchum role waiting to meet “the girl,” even if he has to wait endlessly at a bar she frequents until she finally shows up, and when she does, the hot and sticky Floridian landscape is ripe for the raw sexuality of a heated erotic thriller with murderous implications.  After co-writing the screenplays of two hugely successful movies, George Lucas’s THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) and Stephen Spielberg’s RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981), the former advertising copywriter was offered a chance to direct his own film, making the most of his opportunity, initially turned down by Fox because he insisted upon casting unknown stars, but George Lucas agreed to help finance the film for a smaller studio, even offering advice in the editing room that Kasdan never forgot, reminding him, “Making movies has nothing to do with the technical stuff.  It has everything to do with what kind of person you are.”  Set in the backwater town of Miranda Beach, Florida in the middle of a heat wave, Hurt plays Ned Racine, a lawyer of dubious reputation, with a slew of one-night stands under his belt, whose best friends are assistant deputy prosecutor Peter Lowenstein (Ted Danson, a year before he landed the lead television role in Cheers) and police detective Oscar Grace (J. A. Preston, a year before he landed a television role in Hill Street Blues), who have a habit of meeting in a local diner, shooting the breeze while catching up on their sordid lives, with Lowenstein living vicariously off Racine’s sexual exploits.  It’s clear this is largely a male-driven film, where everything is seen through the eyes of Racine, a bright, likable guy who is the anchor of the film, a small-town lawyer striking it big when he meets an alluring femme fatale in Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner), who is simply extraordinary, reveling in her sexuality with an undeniably devastating presence that literally jumps off the screen (Hurt gets top billing, but Turner steals the show), married to one of the wealthiest men in the area who is twenty years her senior, trapped in a loveless marriage with an ironclad prenuptial agreement that leaves her nothing, living in a mammoth estate, the kind of thing you only see in pictures, yet what we remember is the haunting sound of the front porch wind chimes.  Their torrid affair is all hush hush, but we quickly surmise what’s at stake, surrounded by swaying palms and the constant threat of danger, though we never really get under her façade to see what’s lurking underneath, becoming a seductive metaphor for the destructive power of ambition, offering a staggering amount of hints and inferences, though it’s typically viewed through the male perspective, a product of the male fantasy, driven by ego and lust, where the sweat and suffocating heat provide the atmospheric conditions for some sizzling sex and lurid ideas that extinguish all rational thought, leading into a danger zone, where murder and sex are the same impulse, resulting in a deal to kill the husband consummated in a lawyer’s office.  This film set the tone for a string of excellent neo-noir films that followed, like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), the Coen Brother’s Blood Simple (1984), William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA (1985), David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET (1986), also Michael Mann’s Thief (1981) and MANHUNTER (1986).

Openly intending to reinvent the seething amorality of the best film noirs from the 1940’s, it’s got it all in this neon-shaded contemporary romance, where lust, greed, murder, duplicity, and betrayal are proud standard bearers for this creatively inspired movie, with a jazzy sax-heavy musical score composed by John Barry (who scored many James Bond movies) that elevates the film, heightening the emotional stakes, remaining sexy, seductive, and a little sad, John Barry - Body Heat - 1981 YouTube (3:17), where perhaps the most recognizable refrain comes near the end of this musical sequence, Body Heat - Track 06 I'm Frightened YouTube (2:36).  The torrid chemistry between lead actors William Hurt and Kathleen Turner helped launch the much-discussed film into part of the public conversation, adoringly shot in ‘Scope by Richard H. Kline, expressing a luxurious and sultry beauty.  Exhibiting a razor-sharp tongue, Matty’s opening salvo is “You’re not too smart, I like that in a man,” Body Heat (1981) Lawrence Kasdan HD William Hurt, Kathleen Turner YouTube (4:56), immediately setting the stage for what follows.   Hunkered down at the local watering hole for the exclusive and the elite, Racine scopes the joint before finding his opportunity, assuming a position next to her that few have been privileged enough to obtain, only to hear that smoky, husky voice offer her lay of the landscape, like a warning shot, “There are some men once they get a whiff of it they trail you like a hound,” yet all her dire warnings of disappointment only whet his appetite for more, getting him so wound up there’s no possible way he could just get up and walk away, Body Heat (1981) - Bar Scene - 1080p HD YouTube (3:48), getting ensnared in a nihilistic vision only meant for the most primal impulses, yet he wouldn’t have it any other way, as he’s heard the call of the wild, Body Heat 1981 William Hurt, Kathleen turner YouTube (1:41).  Once he’s hooked, he’s trapped in the illusion of love and glory, which she feeds to him on a platter, finding himself sucked into believing this is paradise, the answer to all his prayers, yet there’s an insatiable need that drives his every move, living on the edge, where he’s constantly reminded there’s an immovable obstacle standing in his way, who only shows up on weekends, but a formidable opponent, as he has money, marriage, and the law on his side, while Racine would be viewed as an opportunist, an outside intruder, a man driven by the worst impulses, where he hasn’t a leg to stand on, which comes to light in a chance encounter, meeting face to face, where Edmund Walker (Richard Crenna, aka Colonel Trautman from the Rambo movies), is a force to be reckoned with, Great Richard Crenna scene in 'Body Heat' (1981) YouTube (4:27).  She’s the outlier, the exception to the rule, driven by the same darker regions that Racine inhabits, only more cunning and calculating, an unscrupulous and sinister woman whose greed knows no bounds, seemingly smoothing it all out, making murder seem necessary and normal, but it’s an aberration, a violation of all that’s untarnished, twisting things up in his mind and making him think it was all his idea.  Kasdan hired Carole Littleton as the film editor to get a female perspective, especially when it came to the sex scenes, much of which ended up on the cutting floor, as he didn’t want this to resemble a male sex fantasy.  A tagline for the film suggests, “As the temperature rises, the suspense begins.”

Racine is not the Atticus Finch lawyer depicted in the movies, but is defined by his human flaws, with a small practice in a small Florida town about an hour north of Miami, handling all kinds of cases, personal injury suits, wills, real estate deals, more serious crimes and anything else that looks promising.  A womanizer who gets easily distracted by danger and sex, he is introduced in the courtroom as a shady character who leans toward sleaze, with a judge scolding him for his flimsy defense in a fraud charge, with a dubious client who miraculously avoids jail time, warned by the judge not to come back to his courtroom without “a better defense or a better class of client,” with Lowenstein congratulating him afterwards for effectively “using incompetence as a weapon.”  This sets the stage for the murky, rot-infested world he inhabits, a smart-ass with a cynical view about the way things work, a small-time character who has a way of getting away with things, like a grown-up frat boy who’s maintained his childish demeanor, as it’s always worked for him, but he’s purely minor leagues.   Meeting Matty Walker is a step into the big time, where the stakes are greater, and the crimes are much more ruthlessly ambitious, as the source of Edmund Walker’s wealth is an undisclosed secret, where his silent investment partners also have a way of getting what they want, willing to do whatever it takes (“Whatever is necessary”), no matter how devious or underhanded, with suggestions that shadowy, criminal-affiliated behavior is a routine part of their playbook.  For Racine to enter the lion’s lair, he would have to get mixed up in the nefarious business of foul play, and this is where Kathleen Turner does not disappoint, as she’s one of the great femme fatale characters of all time, where she skyrocketed to fame from a position of anonymity.  The murder actually occurs midway through the film, with a surprisingly long aftermath allowing Racine to get lost in a maze of narrative confusion, where that extended breadth allows for a slower pace with some astonishing revelations, as the noose around his neck slowly tightens, discovering he’s not the kind of man he thought he was, weak-willed, easily manipulated, and blinded by male delusion.  The first time seeing this film viewers will likely be gobsmacked by the finale, which completely subverts the film noir tradition, some of it due to the easing of censorship codes, with sexuality inherent to the genre, showing copious amounts of graphic sex that was not allowed in the 1940’s, while modern era neo-noirs can also play with different kinds of outcomes, as women are allowed to be as bold and as devious as men, offering an innovative use of plot twists, developing new realities with a greater sense of authenticity than was present in the 40’s.  This is a film that pays reverence to the film noir traditions, wearing its influences like a badge of honor, with Kasdan having done his homework, writing some exquisite dialogue, offering surprising twists, where it’s not by accident that it is still revered today.  These were also breakout performances by Ted Danson, but also Mickey Rourke, playing a savvy ex-con who happens to be an explosives expert, as their careers were jumpstarted by their work in this film.  Ironically, the film was actually shot during a rare cold spell during the winter in Lake Worth, Florida, where stagehands were actually wearing coats when this was being shot, using sprayed-on sweat to create the illusion of heat, which this film sells in every scene, becoming the predominate mood and backdrop for the moral abyss that swallows up these characters.  Turner’s smoldering performance lays the blueprint for Linda Fiorentino in THE LAST SEDUCTION (1994) and Jennifer Tilly in the lesbian noir mélange of Bound (1996), perhaps the last of the great erotic thrillers, though one might also include Diane Lane in Adrian Lyne’s UNFAITHFUL (2002), along with Meg Ryan and Jennifer Jason Leigh as sex-starved sisters in Jane Campion’s In the Cut (2003).