The Cronenberg Thread

It was #6 apparently.

Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is a happy family man running a diner in idyllic small-town Indiana, with a lawyer wife (Maria Bello), a teenage son (Ashton Holmes), and a little girl (Heidi Hayes). One night he responds so deftly and definitively to the violent threats of two killers that he becomes a local hero. A Philadelphia mobster named Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris) hears of the story and soon arrives in town claiming that Tom has another name and background -- that he was once a gangster himself who mutilated one of Fogarty's eyes with barbed wire.

Is A History of Violence a popular genre movie, soliciting visceral, unthinking responses to its violence while evoking westerns and noirs? Or is it an art film, reflecting on the meaning, implications, and effects of its violence, and getting us to do the same? David Cronenberg's genius here is the way he makes it impossible to settle this question.

You can't logically claim that it's both kinds of movie at once -- the devices and intentions of one interfere with those of the other. Yet Cronenberg is so adept at tinkering with our thoughts about violence that he comes very close to pulling off this feat. He provokes confused emotional responses -- laughter at serious moments and spontaneous applause at some of the violent ones -- that might embarrass us, but Cronenberg isn't engaging in parody or irony. Nor is he nihilistically pandering to our worst impulses: the filmmaking is too measured and too intelligent. He implicitly respects us and our responses, even when those responses are silly or disturbing.

There's hardly a shot, setting, character, line of dialogue, or piece of action in A History of Violence that can't be seen as some sort of cliche. Its fantasies about how American small towns are paradise and big cities are hell are genre standbys that Cronenberg milks at every turn. But none of this plays like cliche; Cronenberg is such an uncommon master of tone that we're in a state of denial about our familiarity with the material -- a kind of willed innocence that resembles Tom Stall's own disavowals. (Warning: what follows is full of spoilers.)

Cronenberg keeps his camera too close to Stall's violence to let us feel detached from it. He also takes care to show the immediate consequences of violence -- such as what a shotgun can do to someone's face -- without rubbing our noses in it. But our proximity never allows for any simple identification with Stall -- or if it does, we eventually feel penalized because we don't really know who he is. (His elected surname surely isn't irrelevant.) There's a similar ambiguity in that Cronenberg has spent most of his life and career in Toronto; you might call him a next-door neighbor to the American dream, which includes the cherished idea that we can start our lives over again with a clean slate. We seem to believe and doubt that idea with equal conviction, and the uneasy laughs the film draws out reflect this familiar brand of doublethink.

So do the two remarkable sex scenes between Tom and his wife before and after she learns about his violent past (reportedly Cronenberg's main contributions to Josh Olson's script). In the first, she starts out dominant, playfully dressed as a cheerleader ("because we never got to be teenagers together"), though he winds up on top; the second is spurred by his rough aggression, and she's turned on even though she no longer wants to share the same bed with him. Both scenes testify to the uncommon skills of Mortensen and Bello: they expose more layers of personality than we can possibly keep up with.

At Cannes last May Alexander Horwath -- director of the Austrian Film Museum and one of Europe's best film critics -- caused a minor scandal by loudly berating his colleagues for laughing during a screening of the film. It's easy to feel superior to this behavior, especially since Cronenberg himself has said he doesn't regard laughter as an inappropriate response to certain scenes. But I think Horwath's anger is in some ways a sensitive response. Cronenberg isn't a posthumanist cynic like Lars von Trier, whose nihilism we honor by jeering along with him. Cronenberg is a troubled moralist who doesn't succumb to political correctness about violence, and the meaning of our laughter, however "appropriate," is part of what bothers him.

I've seen the film twice, with very different audiences -- at a gala in Toronto with the filmmakers and cast present and at a local preview with a mainly younger crowd -- and it was uncanny to hear both the laughter and spontaneous applause occur at precisely the same places. The most memorable instances followed two scenes in which Tom's teenage son, Jack, is taunted, insulted, and provoked at school by a classmate.

The first time, in a locker room, Jack defuses the tension, lightly mocking the insults by accepting and even embroidering them. The second time, in a hallway, he again tries to remain cool, but when that doesn't work he beats both the bully and his friend to a bloody pulp. The audience all but cheered -- boorishness won out. Even after we learn that both boys have landed in the hospital, their families might sue, Jack has been suspended from school, and Tom is furious, Jack's stupidity and momentary loss of control are still being celebrated. (A moment later, a similar point gets made when Tom says to Jack, "In this family, we don't solve problems by hitting people." Jack snaps back, "No, we shoot them," and Tom slaps him in response, immediately disproving his point. This time no one applauded, at either screening.)

Jack's comebacks in the locker room got some laughs, but certainly not applause. I'd wager this has to do with our programmed responses to genre; thoughtful responses (which you might call "art-house" responses) are likely to come later and more slowly. But in either case Cronenberg sets up our reactions, both simple and complex, with equal care. Combined with the visceral responses he creates, our thoughts become more than theoretical -- we wind up experiencing them in our gut.

Oh, who needs logic! art doesn't need logic. seriously.

(most of my comments are Oct 18, Mo)

This is so true. Most of Kings & Queen worked because of the vertigo it induced in me. The shift in tones in AHOV, sometimes within the same scene, were almost Hitchcockian, with Cronenberg's similarly clammy regard for people perversely warm and human this time around, thanks in no small part to Bello and Mortensen.

And I detected no self-importance in AHOV, for the same reason I don't view Blue Velvet as a Horrifying Critique of Reagan's America. AHOV is a B-movie purified. Whether you think B-movies need purifying is a whole other question.

Sicinski is pretty much the smartest non-professional critic I know of. He could've put Crash in his top ten and I would've rushed to give it a second look.

trailer for DC's latest:

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809794102/video/3182401/

no no no no no

ok, huh? Mafias and prisons? I want Cronenberg back.

Looks like Viggo's playing Ed Harris from the last one here.

hm

it's sure to have some brutal violence though, i guess
as long as it's got his brand of grime and grit and general uncontainable ooziness, even if not hyper-viscerally rendered, i'm fine

i feel a constant pain in my lower right abdomen, is that a warning sign for the Cronenberg disease?

anybody ever seen this? worth going to...?

Crimes of the Future screening at the Castro with music by I Am Spoonbender

it's definately worth seeing, but not with added "live score."
the long gaps of silence in that film are integral to its aesthetic.

yeah I'm a little perplexed at their addition - as a band they're quite good and definitely attuned to Cronenberg's aesthetic and ideas but I don't see why they're necessary. Cronenberg's rumored to attend, maybe he'll shed some light on it.

A phenomenology of tragedy: illness and body betrayal in The Fly
by Havi Carel

Many interpretations... read [The Fly] as a film about monstrosity ...Illness is taken to be a metaphor for the changes in Seth, changes that continuously turn him away from the human and towards the monstrous. .

...I suggest an opposite interpretation: instead of seeing Seth’s illness as a metaphor for monstrosity, I suggest that monstrosity is a metaphor for illness. Seth’s physical corruption as he becomes more and more monstrous is, in fact, a depiction of illness, and elicits disgust in the viewer that is identical to the disgust elicited by physical corruption brought about by illness. The external deformation of Seth as he becomes more and more fly-like, shown so spectacularly in the film, is a representation of the internal destruction and physiological chaos caused by disease....

http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=95

The Fly was a genuine Hollywood film, a love story, rich in morbid humour, and a metaphor for genius and for any and every disease mankind has faced. As never before, in the relationship between Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, Cronenberg's compassion was revealed. Indeed, The Fly is only incidentally a horror film; it is primarily a screwball romance, one of the great movies about the kinship of freaks and... the rest of us.

^^ david thomson w/ the only worthwhile analysis of this film

uhhhh...people (incl. I think Cronenberg himself) have been saying that about The Fly for years. xpost.

I love every Cronenberg movie I've seen but The Brood is my favorite. I made my girlfriend watch it and not only was she totally creeped out and disturbed but shortly after that she became pregnant.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

He has creepy gyno stuff in the Brood, the Fly, Shivers, and of course DEAD RINGERS...what is the deal with this man?

He played the gynecologist in The Fly.

There's creepy gyno stuff, yes, but there's also a more general obsession with bodies in general, and how squicky they are, and how they break down.

Oh, see, I hadn't read the Morbs post. The Fly is a perfect example.

i thought i'd heard he said the fly was about how in a love affair one person always turns into a monster.

^^also this

I'm looking forward to the new Cronenberg about as much as I am the new Paul Haggis flick.

Hey, Haggis wrote the screenplay for Casino Royale, which I think is great. He's not all bad.

There's creepy gyno stuff, yes, but there's also a more general obsession with bodies in general, and how squicky they are, and how they break down.

True, but it's worth noting that Cronenberg has never pushed specifically male sexual biology for grossness points.

what about the armpit peepee

i've seen the trailer for "eastern promises" . it was kinda lame, i hope the movie won't be.

http://emanuellevy.com/article.php?articleID=6811

Man, yeah, he's got hella stuff about getting PREGGERS...I can't imagine him making a movie about twin proctologists.

Makes him all the scarier, me being a girl and all. UGH that birth scene in the Brood.

what about the armpit peepee

It comes out of a armpit girl vagina that is attached to a actual girl. So "maleness" angle here is kinda secondary. Fact, it ranks kinda high on the girl-sex-grossness scale.

Man, watch that Eastern Promises trailer. Naomi Watts plays a MIDWIFE...there's a scene of her in surgical scrubs. I can't wait to watch interror as a 14-year-old-girl dies in a puddle of her own leukorrhea or something.

Actually I think it looks like a good movie. The only problem I can foresee is the fake Russian accent. I'm afraid it'll remind me of that letter being read by Lisa's Russian pen pal in the Simpsons, which changes in the middle to being written by a man overthrowing their house. "SINCERELY, LITTLE GIRL."

haha

Cronenberg movies suck.

"Cronenberg has modestly described himself as looking like a Beverly Hills gynaecologist"

Apparently Scorsese said this about him!

But he was MORE THAN HAPPY to keep the title, apparently.

hmmmm

http://www.filmfestivals.com/berlin99/img/cronenberg.jpg

I don't see the problem.

more recently:

http://25frames.org/media/news/david_cronenberg.jpg