Martin Scorsese praised David Cronenberg back when
Cronenberg was generally dismissed as just a horror director. His penchant
for biological horror set Cronenberg apart from his contemporaries, but
most critics still ignored Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977). Now, with A History
of Violence, others are waking up to his
brilliance. Violence topped the 2005 Village Voice Movie Poll, the best poll of its kind in the United
States. Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings) stars as the owner of a small-town diner whose life is
turned upside down after he foils a robbery attempt. Mortensen dispatches
the two thugs with such precision that he becomes a local hero. His
celebrity attracts the attention of a Philadelphia mobster (Ed Harris), who
claims that Mortensen is actually a long-lost member of the mob. Maria
Bello gives the strongest performance as Mortensen’s suffering wife,
no longer sure of her husband’s true identity, but William Hurt comes
on like gangbusters in a small but pivotal role at the end. Violence is violent, as its title
clearly suggests, and Cronenberg’s horror skills are evident in the
gory scenes. Scanners (1981),
Cronenberg’s first great film, has been widely considered a classic
of the horror genre. Scanners, society’s outcasts, have the ability
to scan the minds of others and ultimately blow up their heads. The style
of the film seems off-kilter at first, but a greater understanding of
Cronenberg’s vision permits a better appreciation of its bizarre
nature. The cult status of Scanners allowed Cronenberg to cast a more prominent actor in his
next film. James Woods stars in Videodrome (1983) as the operator of a cable-television company who
becomes intrigued by a mysterious torture television show. Woods’
journey to track down the show draws him into a mind-altering world of
surrealistic dementia. Videodrome is Cronenberg at his most brilliant, and it should have
crossed over into the serious art-film market. Cronenberg’s most
controversial film is something called Crash (1997), but it bears no relation to this year’s Best
Picture winner. James Spader stars as an auto-accident survivor who becomes
part of a cult of car-crash fetishists. The idea is as strange as it
sounds, and few directors could believably handle such a freakish premise.
Cronenberg may be slowly moving closer to the mainstream, but he retains
his uncanny ability to creep beneath your skin.
Available on DVD this Tuesday (March 21): Capote, Derailed, Dreamer, and The Squid and the Whale.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2006.
