Looking Back at Histories of Violence

At first blush Tom Stall, the main character of David Cronenberg’s 2005 film A History of Violence, has the perfect life. The film was recently given the Criterion rollout, which is timely given what it has to say about the current debates about American identity. He’s the owner of a popular diner in small town Indiana, cheerfully greeted by his neighbors and customers, dotes on his wife and children, and generally seems to be living the quintessential American dream. His world looks like something out of a 50’s melodrama. His wife Edie (played with exquisite subtlety by Maria Bello) even coos that he’s the finest man she’s ever known. Played by the great Viggo Mortensen, Stall certainly has all the traits of the classic All-American man, with his blue eyes and blond hair, square jaw, and strong shoulders. Yet if you peer closely enough through the hazy glow of Americana, there’s something a bit off about him.

Tom’s life is so damn normal, so idealized, that it verges on weird. There’s a feral glimmer deep in Stall’s piercing eyes and a haunted expression carved into the features of his face. Something isn’t right. Mortensen knows how to play wild men, such as the bad seed brother in Sean Penn’s underrated 1991 directorial debut The Indian Runner. Mortensen has played tough guys for Cronenberg elsewhere, notably in 2007’s Eastern Promises as a conflicted Russian gangster. 

When some lethal miscreants show up at Stall’s diner one night and start to ransack the place, he takes them both down with ruthless efficiency that shocks and impresses the community. The plot starts to thicken as an old crony (a menacing Ed Harris) shows up out of the past (a classic noir trope) sneering at him with a creepily gnarled eye, insisting that he knows Stall’s history and his true identity quite well. We come to find out why his eye looks like that. 

Admittedly, Cronenberg’s abiding obsession with body horror can be a little much for some. In this film it’s necessary, a blunt approach to the physical consequences of violence keeps the story from turning into the usual boring clichés about good guys and bad guys shooting it out. As Nathan Lee’s insightful essay points out, when we see the bloody result of Stall’s scuffle in the diner “the close-up of a mangled head bleeding out…is narratively superfluous but textually imperative: this is what happens when you shoot a man in the head, the image declares, and it’s not very fun or cathartic.” That head looks repulsive, which is exactly as it should look, since it’s the result of Tom’s unexpectedly dangerous capabilities.

Insisting on making Tom’s carnage palpable invites the viewer to think twice about how many vivid images of death and destruction they have consumed onscreen and applauded over the years. Let alone what’s often euphemistically glossed over in news reports or historical accounts. It’s impressive how Cronenberg has made a long career out of conscientiously pushing the limits of what he’s able to get audiences to watch in popular films. 

Cronenberg examines the effects of the father’s brutal turn on the rest of the family. Stall’s charming teenage son, who had been wittily talking his way out of getting bullied at school, starts to pick up some extra confidence when responding to the goons who bully him and his family. Though he doesn’t let his father off the hook for his past, either. Everyone initially assumes that his shrugging off the media attention is a sign of his humility until it becomes apparent that he avoids the spotlight because he’s hiding something. And it begs the question of how can Stall be a moral example to his family and community as the truth about his past is slowly brought to light?

Edie’s initially proud response to Tom’s manly defense of the diner gives way to apprehension at what her ostensibly moral husband might be capable of. There’s a particularly complex dynamic in a sex scene that might or might not be a reference to a similar scene in the ever-controversial 1971 Peckinpah film Straw Dogs, which also explores the darker implications of masculinity. Tom’s newly re-released animalistic side comes out in a way that isn’t easily explained or excused. Apparently, the actors gamely refused to wear protection pads offered by Cronenberg and came away from the scene with bruises. Flickers of anger, fear, and shock variously flash across Stall’s face as he realizes that there’s no going back. He must resort to increasingly desperate measures to maintain the appearance of normalcy. A very American paradox.

Cronenberg is Canadian, which puts him in a long tradition of artists coming from elsewhere to shine a curious light on the aspects of American life that Americans don’t always like to think about. You don’t have to be an expert on American history to observe how much the valorization of violence — officially sanctioned or otherwise — permeates our history, our culture, and our collective unconscious. It’s everywhere in the movies, of course, as A History of Violence’s relationship to similarly themed films subtly reminds us. Americans tend to be pretty gung-ho about settling problems with fists, guns, tanks, and atom bombs even if we don’t like to think of ourselves as a warlike people. A History of Violence is one of the films which makes that glaring contrast unavoidable.  

The title’s academic-sounding title works on multiple levels. Literally, it references the shady past that Tom’s tried so hard to repress. Zooming out a bit, it also points to an integral part of Tom’s American identity, an urgent and timely reminder of the legions of skeletons clamoring within the closet of American history. Plenty of people in power are actively trying to deny, downplay, or ignore the implications of that history and the difficult truths it forces us to reckon with about ourselves. Stall’s character personifies two diametrically opposed forces in American life: an awareness of one’s potential for anarchic violence and of the subsequent urge to keep it hidden for the sake of keeping up appearances.

That anguished contradiction makes the subdued ending — no spoilers — so unsettling. When Stall finally returns to his shaken family’s house after settling old scores, he’s not the same man they thought they knew and they aren’t the same people they thought they were. The brilliantly disturbing twist is that even though no one knows how to react to this harsh reality they tacitly accept its terms anyway. Even though their father has revealed himself to be the exact type of person he’s supposed to protect them from, they nevertheless accept him as the head of the family. Such denial is necessary to keep the tenuous performance of normalcy intact. Maybe that’s the price you pay for ignoring history, however violent it might be.