David Cronenberg
A History Of Violence

We sleep; a dream has the power to poison sleep.
We rise; a wandering thought pollutes the day.
We feel, imagine, or reason; laughter or tears.
Embrace the living suffering, or crush the distress.
It's the same: whether it's joy or sadness,
the path for its departure is always clear.
A man's yesterday will never be like his tomorrow.
Nothing can last but changeability.

Nothing is as it seems. This is the message Cronenberg wants to convey. A History of Violence is a "revealing" film, a story much like those we hear increasingly every day. Cronenberg demolishes all human certainties, sweeps away serenity and harmony, reducing man to being a subject of something ungovernable: violence. The director reminds us that violence is in every part of society and affects everyone: in this case, a very ordinary person who lives happily with his family. Violence that the Canadian director also uses subtly to give us the sense of how everything can collapse in a breath. Emblematic in this sense is the sex scene on the stairs...

A dry and clean direction that, even without the use of flashbacks, lets us glimpse the past of Tom Stall, played by an excellent Viggo Mortensen. A protagonist mentally very tied to Ralph Fiennes in Spider. If indeed the title might suggest a thriller story for its own sake, Cronenberg surprises us with a truly remarkable character development. A serene family that will see all the certainties built with a life of sacrifices waver in an instant. Because Cronenberg's "various exaggerations" are absolutely real, revealing indeed what increasingly happens in American society. The "fairy tale" of the decent family living happily, that much-vaunted American dream. All this is dismantled and ridiculed in less than an hour and a half of film. Cronenberg cares little about criticism but himself takes on the role of critic, denouncing a society now accustomed to false heroes...

Everything seems perfect and wonderfully interconnected. Husband and wife who love each other, with two children to take care of and a life that seemingly flows calmly.

And yet everything will blow up. Because it is the story of our days that tells us this. Because it is Cronenberg who decided this...

"A History of Violence" is a film dominated by drama. It is a parallel film: the difficulties that will arise in family affairs and the violence that will primarily involve Tom, but which will then inevitably fall on all family members.

David Cronenberg leaves us with hope, with perhaps recovered harmony. Because the ending is the most astonishing that could be realized: unexpected, sad, immensely simple...