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?  

The Irishman

Jimmy Hoffa testifying at a Senate hearing on labor racketeering, 1958

Hoffa leaving a federal courthouse, with Charles (Chuckie) O’Brien behind, 1964

Hoffa, his cuffed hands concealed by his raincoat, beginning his prison sentence, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, December 9, 1967

Mob boss Anthony Provenzano, in the driveway to his Florida home, answering press questions about Hoffa’s disappearance, August 5, 1975

Frank “the Irishman” Sheeran, 1970; Robert De Niro

Jimmy Hoffa in 1974; Al Pacino

Director Martin Scorsese

Scorsese on the set with Robert De Niro

THE IRISHMAN                   B+                  

USA  (209 mi)  2019  d:  Martin Scorsese

Scorsese returns to the gangster gravitas of his earlier masterwork Goodfellas (1990), yet it’s slower, less flashy, and without the spectacular visual fireworks that pervade throughout his earlier film, offering an older perspective, as his central characters have been killed off or aged considerably, where the narrative has them looking back at their lives, which could just as easily be a comprehensive overview of everything Scorsese’s done in his entire career, like a personal reckoning, offering reflections on religion, sin, and mortality.  Encompassing so much, it’s a different kind of picture, yet it brings together three legends who have defined American cinema since the 1970’s, Robert De Niro (age 76) as Frank Sheeran, Al Pacino (age 79) as Jimmy Hoffa, and Joe Pesci (age 76) as Philly mob boss Russell Bufalino, coming out of retirement to make this film.  Pacino and De Niro earned their fame in Francis Ford Coppola’s classical gangster saga THE GODFATHER (1972, 74), while De Niro and Pesci worked with Scorsese for three decades beginning in the 70’s, with De Niro overjoyed at the role, indicating this film represents some “unfinished business” between himself and Martin Scorsese as the last of the great gangster sagas.  While De Niro and Pesci last worked together with Scorsese on CASINO (1995), De Niro and Pacino worked together in one tantalizing scene from Michael Mann’s HEAT (1995), paying their respects in a temporary truce between a lawman and an infamous outlaw, reuniting again on a forgettable project entitled RIGHTEOUS KILL (2008) that tanked domestically but did better overseas.  The three are more understated than usual, more pensive, where the strength of their larger-than-life performances is their restraint.  De Niro and Pesci deliver quintessential performances, where it’s especially rewarding to see them working so in synch with each other, yet de Niro and Pacino are equally as nuanced, where these are developed relationships that come from spending years together, where this kind of mutual trust captured onscreen is simply exquisite to behold.  Steve Zaillian adapted a screenplay from the 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, a book written by Charles Brandt, a former homicide prosecutor, investigator, and defense attorney who chronicles the life of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a WWII vet who rose from the ranks of a truck driver to a mob hitman, eventually working as a bodyguard for Teamster union boss Jimmy Hoffa.  While Sheeran confesses to working for the Bufalino family, committing hits on mobster Joe Gallo and Jimmy Hoffa, who mysteriously disappeared in 1975 and his body has never been found, it remains one of the great unsolved mysteries, with several sources thoroughly discrediting the so-called confession by the Irishman, including Bill Tonelli’s article The Lies of the Irishman from Slate, August 7, 2019, with Brandt and his publisher standing by their claims a week later, Publisher of I Heard You Paint Houses responds. - Slate ..., refuted again by a Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith in his essay "Jimmy Hoffa and The Irishman: A True Crime Story?" from The New York Review of Books, September 26, 2019.  The film speaks for itself, as it’s a movie, not historical nonfiction, shot primarily on 35mm, and at three and a half hours it’s the longest mainstream film released in the past twenty years.   Of unique interest, new digital technology introduced by special effects supervisor Pablo Helman from Industrial Light & Magic actually de-ages the actors digitally, making them appear 30 years younger, actually expanding the range of the actors, which comes as a surprise, feeling a bit disorienting.  This is ironic, especially considering one of De Niro’s greatest roles was playing a younger version of an aging Marlon Brando in GODFATHER II (1974), which allowed him to win an Academy Award.  Had this technology existed back then he may never have been offered that role.    

Opening and closing in a Catholic-run nursing home, using that choreographed Steady Cam shot zooming down the hallways and peering into the various rooms before it finally sets upon De Niro in a wheelchair, aged considerably, as he joins into the existing narration, basically recounting his life story, recalling his various criminal activities over several decades, though despite his sincerity, he’s an unreliable narrator, as the character on which he’s based has a long history of making unsubstantiated claims, making this a Scorsese vehicle rather than revisionist history, which simply adds more flavor to this long and extensively detailed crime saga, all set to the 50’s doo-wop music of the Five Satins singing In the Still of the Night YouTube (3:00), which becomes the nostalgic musical motif of the film, always associated with De Niro as Frank Sheeran.  Rather than accentuate the ferocious energy of his earlier films, this film is more somber and reflective, where Frank is a quiet guy who keeps things to himself, leading a hermetic existence keeping in the background, revealing the price you pay living this life, filled with plenty of guilt and regrets afterwards, as you were never around when your kids were growing up, feeling distant and alienated, as if in another parallel universe from theirs, as your business is never mentioned or discussed at home, but it becomes pretty clear there’s a reason, as people you’re affiliated with end up dead, described on TV news reports as members of mob families, all coming to extremely violent ends.  There are inevitably whispers around the neighborhood, talk that your children are subjected to, but there is also clear and undisputed evidence when you witness your father stomp a local grocer in plain sight on the street one day after he reportedly shoved his precious daughter.  Hard not to remember the viciousness of that image from an early age.  Told completely in flashback mode, the story within the story is a road trip between Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and Sheeran heading west on the interstate from Philadelphia, expected to turn north to Detroit for an associate’s wedding, with both their wives in the back seat.  Regularly stopping for smoke breaks (the women smoke like chimneys), as they’re not allowed to smoke in the car, this allows time to pass and Frank’s story to unfold, beginning as a trucker delivering meat in Pennsylvania, eventually making personal deliveries for well-connected mob figures, working his way up the ranks, eventually charged with theft, but when he refused to name names, certain people were impressed, where his entry level introduction to the syndicate included Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano), the lawyer that got him off, and the lawyer’s cousin Russell (Joe Pesci), a Sicilian crime boss who has his hands on anything that makes money, where if you do business at all you do business with Russell Bufalino, with Pesci surprisingly restrained, under control, always thoughtful and deliberate, who takes a liking to Frank, surprised that an Irishman speaks Italian, but he learned it serving in Italy on the front lines during the war, frequenting Russell’s home town in Sicily, which seals the deal, giving him a few hit jobs, but he’s also an explosives expert from his army training, so he’s above and beyond his normal pay grade.  For that reason, Russell introduces him to Jimmy Hoffa.  “I heard you paint houses” are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Sheeran by phone, who immediately responds “I also do my own carpentry work,” referring to both the hit and the clean-up.

What people forget today is the immense popularity of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), head of the Teamsters Union, with Frank claiming “In the ’50’s, he was like Elvis… In the ’60’s he was bigger than the Beatles,” as powerful as anyone in the country with the exception of the President, as the union represented truck drivers, transporting goods, doing business in every state, and in those days everything was delivered by a truck, as they were the wheels generating the business.  The mob had a particular interest in the Teamsters as they laundered their dirty money through them, clearing the way for a more profitable business relationship.  The flamboyant Hoffa was a bit of a rabble-rouser, but it irked the mob when he gave a million dollar donation to Nixon in his race against Kennedy in 1960, as Kennedy was the mob candidate, based on their connection to his father, Joseph Kennedy, making his family fortune as a bootlegger back in the Prohibition Days of the Great Depression.  The mob was under the impression the Kennedys would return the casinos and night clubs in Havana back into their hands, but the Bay of Pigs disaster (Frank delivered the guns) upended that dream.  Nonetheless, Hoffa hated the Kennedys and their elite Ivy League privilege, which always turns against the working man.  When Bobby Kennedy became Attorney General, he led a one-man crusade against Jimmy Hoffa, claiming rampant fraud and corruption, continually hauled in front of Congressional investigation panels.  When Kennedy was shot, Hoffa was overjoyed, knowing the pressure would be off his back, and it was, but one remaining trial convicted him of bribery and jury tampering in 1964, sentenced to thirteen years in prison, three years spent in appeals, eventually serving his sentence in 1967.  Less than five years into his sentence, Nixon gave him a Presidential pardon, commuting his sentence to time served.  Displaying an obsessional drive, with occasional manic temper flare-ups, displaying a showboat mentality, narcissistically wanting all of the attention, Hoffa could think of nothing else but retaining his power as President of the Teamsters, but the mob was already getting whatever they wanted from the current leadership, basically their chosen puppet, believing Hoffa would thwart this free access, warning him on several occasions, but his open hatred for Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano (Stephen Graham), whose votes he needed, only opened a greater riff, where he became viewed as a loose cannon, an out-of-control liability, dangerously upsetting their plans, disappearing without a trace in 1975, never to be seen again, with Frank at the center of it all, perhaps embellished, who knows, though Tony Pro was there on the day he disappeared as well and went to the grave without uttering a word.  Many went to prison afterwards on matters not related to Hoffa as the Feds tried to remove the influence of the mob on the Teamsters Union. 

Told out of order, freely moving backwards and forwards, the rhythm of the story remains fluid throughout, only slowing down near the end as the men age and spend their time feebly in prison, basically shells of their former selves, but age catches up to everyone, where it’s no accident that a movie marquee is seen playing THE SHOOTIST (1976), marking John Wayne’s last hurrah, the end of an era, where the latter part of this film mostly looks back, becoming a contemplative lament.  The depiction of these men is not the youthful hot-tempered live wires just itching for a fight in Mean Streets (1973) when Scorsese was age 30, or the coked-up hotheads of Goodfellas when the director was 48, instead now when the director is 76-years old they are middle-aged family men who stay at the Howard Johnson’s Motor Home, sitting next to each other in their pajamas at night, just like the rest of typical middle class families on the road, or go bowling with their wives, doing nothing to draw attention, as they completely blend into the conventional mainstream, becoming a less romanticized end-of-the-road final chapter, where underwoven into this American narrative are significant historical events, like the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, where the mafia corruption creeps into the political mainstream.  Among the more vibrantly filmed sequences are the restaurant or nightclub scenes, or a testimonial dinner for Frank, with Hoffa introducing him, with all the legendary figures present, perfectly recreated and dimly lit, with the cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto creating a recognizable haven for underworld figures that was the staple of Goodfellas, often associated with perfectly chosen music, like FATS DOMINO: "The fat man", 1949 - YouTube (2:43) or El Negro Zumbon (Anna) - Silvana Mangano - NO ... - YouTube (2:27).  Colorful mob figures are sprinkled throughout, becoming a who’s who of organized crime, where one of the more amusing techniques is utilizing freeze frame shots identifying particular mobsters, including their nicknames, indicating the date and manner of their subsequent murders.  There’s also an interesting twist in the use of Frank’s daughter Peggy, Anna Paquin as an adult and Lucy Gallina as a child, who witnesses first hand her father’s assault techniques when he straightens out a local grocer who steps out of line, growing wary right there and then of just exactly what he does for a living, expressed almost completely by long, accusatory stares.  She has only a single line of dialogue in the entire picture, yet she’s one of the most effective characters, standing for the moral conscience he doesn’t have, silently bearing witness.  It’s no accident that Hoffa becomes particularly attached to her, like her long lost uncle, buying her ice cream at an early age, dancing with her at parties, where they were obviously close, yet she never spoke to her father ever again from the day Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, causing Frank considerable grief in his old age and probably the source of his biggest regret.  This is what sticks at the end of the picture, as Frank has no regrets about what he did for a living, seen in various chats with a young priest that is probably the closest he ever comes to confession, but this emotional divide with his daughter where she simply doesn’t trust or value him as a human being is a new wrinkle, a point of consternation that his earlier gangster films never had, adding poignancy to his final days, which must feel restless, plagued by unfinished business, yet he’s powerless to do anything about it for perhaps the only time in his life.  He understood the patriarchal order of things, the pecking order of the mob, the men who commanded respect, and paid his dues diligently, as that was the order of things, but he failed miserably as a family man, routinely neglecting his own children, remaining distant and aloof, and by the time he figured it out it was too late as the damage was already done.  Since the life expectancy for most mob figures comes to a sudden and premature end, there’s little thought about regrets, but that is the central theme of this picture, one that haunts viewers with an unexpected urgency, with a mournful and melancholic-tinged Robbie Robertson composition playing over the end credits adding a touch of finality.