Superhero releases can be taken for granted these days, but understandably so. Year over year we are treated to – but also potentially disappointed by – the myriad of comic book adaptations that saturate the market, because for every creative success like The Batman and Spider-Man: Now Way Home, there’s still abject failures like Sony’s disastrous duo Madame Web and Morbius. While it is up for debate as to whether or not we are still in the “golden age of superhero cinema”, it’s easy to forget that before 2008’s Iron Man (and by extension, the Marvel Cinematic Universe) changed everything, studios were more willing to focus on more unassuming but brilliant comic book adaptations that we sadly don’t see very often anymore, and no film stands out more in this regard than David Cronenberg’s 2005 masterpiece A History of Violence.
Films like this came at a fascinating time when there was a rejuvenation of the comic book movie thanks to Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002), but before the shared universe explosion that began in the late 2000’s and blew up in the 2010’s. We even saw a wholly original superhero thriller, M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable (2000), which represents a love letter to the comic book genre and was frankly ahead of its time. However, some of the most intriguing and engrossing comic book adaptations of this time were not dealing with narratives of superheroes or science fiction, but rather average humans in deeply relatable and introspective narratives, such as Ghost World (2001) and Road to Perdition (2002).
This sub-genre of comic book adaptations, for me at least, reached its zenith with A History of Violence, the story of which centres on Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), a mild-mannered family man who runs a diner in smalltown Indiana. Tom suddenly becomes a local celebrity when he kills two violent thieves who, thanks to a brilliantly understated one-shot opening scene, we know were likely going to murder every witness in the diner after robbing it. While hailed as a hero, this also draws dangerous Philadelphia mobsters to Tom’s sleepy town, believing him to be a former associate named Joey Cusack who wronged them many years back and went on the run, upending the quiet, sheltered life he and his family once had.
To those who have yet to see it, upon hearing the title of the film, in addition to fact that the master of “body horror” himself, David Cronenberg, is sitting in the director’s chair, it would be fair to assume that A History of Violence contains visceral bouts of…well, violence. Which it does. But if you are even slightly familiar with Cronenberg as an artist, then you know that there is a hell of a lot more simmering beneath the surface of his assaults on the body. As someone who has seen the vast majority of Cronenberg’s work, I would further argue that A History of Violence is the ultimate reconciliation of visuals and thematics in the filmmaker’s storied career of more than five decades.
Even the title of this film possesses deceiving depth, as it not only addresses an individual’s own history of violence, both also its broader scope in human history, which is sadly often written in blood. The film as a whole is a meditation on the concept of violence, asking if it is inherent in us all, passed down from generation to generation, and if so, can we escape our own history and the never-ending cycle that violence brings, with Josh Olson’s Oscar-nominated screenplay deserving immense credit for navigating such difficult subject matter and the existential questions that comes with it.
However, it is Cronenberg’s approach to the material that really brings it all together. He delivers the movie’s violence in a cerebral, restrained manner that never indulges in it, but rather emphasizes the brutal and often devastating results that occur in mere moments. There’s no slow motion, nor are there prolonged sequences that unnecessarily pad the runtime. Instead, there are momentary bursts of violence, and then the profoundly human ramifications surrounding these events, which ultimately makes this one of the most effective ponderings on the human condition of this century.
If you have yet to see the movie and (somehow) still on the fence, you don’t have to take it from me, but instead from Viggo Mortensen himself, who has worked with Cronenberg on multiple occasions, and said of A History of Violence in a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter that “If not the best, it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever been in….the way that that script was handled, the way it was shot…it’s a perfect film noir movie, or it’s close to perfect I should say.” Bear in mind, this is coming from an actor who starred in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which in and of itself emphasizes the sheer brilliance of what is arguably David Cronenberg’s magnum opus.
So do yourself a favour and watch A History of Violence if you haven’t already. Meanwhile, if you have already seen it, even as recently as last week, then it’s about time you watched it again to appreciate the subtle nuances that make this as close to a perfect movie as one can get, and this time I’m the one saying it.