Comments on: Violence is Bad

By: Dman

Dman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Ugh…it’s a huge bummer to read your take, Sepoy. Of course, I would take your word over those of the critics who are apparently on Cronenberg’s payroll. Having talked to Mrs. Sepoy about the movie, I am convinced it’s not worth watching. Perhaps when it comes out in avi… ;)

By: Quizman

Quizman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Okay..its off my Netflix list.

This on the other hand, I would’ve paid to see.

By: Dman

Dman — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

BTW, if you want a good movie about violence in America, I suggest “Land of Plenty,” which was released last year.

By: raven

raven — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

sepoy, will you consider enlisting in a little project about an insensitive jerk?

By: Veena

Veena — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I was so going to see this movie until I saw this!

By: Bryant

Bryant — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Welp, my big point of disagreement is on the end result. I don’t think the end result /is/ a tortured conversation over meatloaf. Cronenberg doesn’t show us the outcome; the final shot, with Maria Bello about to say something, is not a conclusion.

If you think we’re supposed to conclude that everything goes back to normal at that point — after the killings, after the cops have shown that they’re unable to protect their own, that there is no safety, after the cops have become complicit in the coverup… then sure, it’s a copout ending. But I don’t buy that interpretation.

By: sepoy

sepoy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Bryant: “Cronenberg doesn’t show us the outcome” - my point exactly. Why not? Does Cronenberg shy from showing us the violence? Or that dreamscape of America complete with hoodlums from the big city? No. So, why this sudden reticence? What is this, Lost in Violence?
Maria Bello has plenty of opportunity to say something when he enters the room - that she waited for him to sit and food to be served tells me that whatever it was, it wasn’t “normal”.

By: Paul Taegel

Paul Taegel — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

It seems as though your objection to A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE lies more in the thematic interpretations of write-ups you’ve read than in the film itself. Lots of critics seem loathe to savor a rollickiing good yarn without appending some sort of allegorical context to it. Mr. and Mrs. SMITH? Bush’s America? You’ve got to be joking. In A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE we have an non-temporally located film–it could be the 1930’s for all the relevance today’s political climate bears on the film’s story and its central characters. What we do have is a great story that neatly traverses a lot of the genre’s cliche’s. It’s also told with an elegance that allows us entry into the minds of some complex characters who must ultimately live with ambiguity–within themselves and the people they care about. That was my take on it. For more of my ingenious reviews, check out filmradar,com

By: rob

rob — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

“The “normal” conclusion of homicide and fratricide should be a suicide. There is no normal in that scenario. Life does NOT continue as is.”

Working within the family-allegory-for-nation framework: Aren’t you rather missing the point about post-Afgh/Iraq America that Croney might be trying to get across? Isn’t the issue not so much that the disavowed, foundational violence of the USA is doomed to repeat itself but that we are also doomed to incorporate and wilfully forget/incorporate such violence? It is the peverse, Ballardian aspect of the wife who half-revels in being raped by her monstrous husband that is violence to this film, not the self-destructive guilt of Sepoy-Ethics.

I also agree with Paul that the film could be timeless, regardless of what Croney says. I mean, cummon, nobody reads Flaubert cos they love his politics, do they?