The Cronenberg Thread

I don't want to sound like a dick, but I'd honestly like to know how it was effective as a thriller, jaymc. The end was never in doubt to me - there was no question that Viggo would settle his Philly business and wind up back on the farm.

I'm just referring to much of the commentary and praise surrounding the film, esp. from daily and mag critics, who seem to think that the 'violence comes back to bite you on the ass'/'never outrun your past'/etc. is something new and innovative. I wouldn't care if the film had been otherwise successful.

If only, John.

'violence comes back to bite you on the ass'/'never outrun your past'/etc.

I haven't seen the new one yet but now I don't have to thanks to this brilliantly succinct encapsulations!

http://nypress.com/18/38/film/seitz.cfm

Hate to think how arid it would've been without Ed Harris and William Hurt having a ball. As mysteriously overrated as "Spider was underappreciated.

I wonder what non-auteurist heartland multiplex audiences make of scenes like the staircase fuck. "Edna, this remind you o' Crash?"

>Cronenberg can hardly be accused of being a non-diverse filmmaker. This isn't John Ford or anything.<

Alex, you know he made non-westerns, yes? War films, comedies, "The Informer"? Try "The Sun Shines Bright," which on certain days I think is his best work. (And it's a remake of an early '30s Ford film with Will Rogers, "Judge Priest," which was quite good to begin with.)

They go "Man I hate Dr Morbius, constantly making asinine comments on all the threads about films and sports and politics on that there I Love Everything web-enabled BBS. How come these movies never show any wang?"

He wrote some of it without WGA credit in collaboration with this Josh Olson guy; from a Salon interview:

I didn't know this script was based on a graphic novel for a long time, because nobody told me. When I found out, Josh and I had already done a couple of rewrites. I said, "What do you mean, graphic novel?" and he said, "Oh, didn't anybody tell you?" They found me a copy and I looked at it, and I thought, well, we've gone so far in a different direction that this is actually irrelevant. In fact, if someone had brought me the graphic novel and said, "Are you interested in adapting this?" I'm not sure I would have said yes...

Q. Did his screenplay include the two intensely physical erotic scenes we see in the film?

It did not. I added those scenes.

Jams Murphy OTM on the hideous early Viggo-Bello dialogue; when I read in that same interview DC says "no irony" was a rule -- shit, there goes his only out.

Not one of Howard Shore's better scores; my friend recognized one of the closing-credit themes as a short walk from Return to the Shire.

There's a lot going on, nearly all of it sledgehammer-obvious, even compared to "Unforgiven" as MZS mentions.

I though the peak was the shots wrapping up the stairs hatefuck -- Bello kicking VM away, her showering, the blue night-shot of the scrape on her back.

It struck me, and I just remembered, that some sense that all kinds of security are built on some kind of.. well, force and the willingness to use it. That's not so clear, but what I mean is, all the scenes with the local sheriff had this feel of playing up the effects of just straight up intimidation and potential for violence as the real forces keeping some sort of order in the community, the letter of the law being pretty much irrelevant.

I don't get this "violence underlying everyday life" theme. If your everyday life involves you desperately, schizophrenically hiding your bounty-killer past, then yes, it's about the violence the underlies everyday life. Otherwise it's about the violence underlying the life of a man desperately, schizophrenically hiding his bounty-killer past.

I agree with Dr. Morbius about the dialogue of the first 30 minutes or so. It really seemed over the top, and it's really hard to believe Cronenberg sees it playing straight down the middle.

I'm not saying it's done geniously (Blue Velvet does some of the same stuff, way more geniously), but I think it's all there.

As far as it being a metaphor for W's foreign policy, as Croney and Viggo are talking up in their interviews, I guarantee you that's not crossing the mind of viewers who aren't reading it beforehand. The quiet dinner finale brought Bill (compassionate bomber of Serbia / executioner of brain-damaged man / welfare abolitionist / serial postadolescent tomcat) Clinton to my mind.

"The Fly" is still his triumph to me; an accessible, disgusting romantic comedy/tragedy derived from a '50s B movie (and the peak of its two stars). It had the emotion and resonance this one only has in jolts.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=780

(I originally wanted the "overall" line to read "Better than A History of Violence," but that was just as a joke.)

-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), October 18th, 2005.

otm. generally i think this movie sits well with the rest of cronenberg's ouevre, in that it's theme of 'violence underlies human behavior' is part of the greater theme in his work: that human beings are essentially fragile biological machines.

the way it veered between that (and of course the plunging into all sorts of cliché and massively obvious signposts with relish) and some really gripping intensity was unsettling: i was laughing pretty much throughout the last violent scene, when tom/joey escapes his bro's henchmen, because his knack for killing and not getting killed was somewhat ludicrous by that point (plus "how d'you fuck that one up?"), but that amusement was ruptured by the violence being just slightly more graphic than you expect, and viggo mortensen's amazing acting - his eyes switch-flicked between genial and psychotic so effectively.

also viggo mortensen was HOTT. um, as was the son. i couldn't quite decide which was hotter.

I like my DC films with new orifices (or uses for them) or detachable body parts.

Some critic brought up "dreamlike" mise-en-scene, and not so much charcterizations as "role-playing." Which was my defense of Eyes Wide Shut, but too many strings were showing in this film.

I see the "lie" in History of Violence in the way the straight characters continue to deny the level to which they're invigorated by their own opportunity for debasement. The son's snitfit where he makes a crack to his dad "you gonna rub me out?!" is directed so that it's clear the son's gas tank (which was filled during the school hallway scene) just got topped off.

If the thing had been executed (yuk yuk) with any sort of aesthetic *conviction*, I might've bought it, but it was like a schematic Brechtian thing with little verve.

And really, at no level of stylization is THAT kid kicking THOSE bullies' asses deserving of any response but WTF?!

The William Hurt scenes were so smashingly effective because Cronenberg and Hurt purposely went over the top; I was laughing as hysterically as you were, as was the audience.