What is the significance of the film "History of Violence"?

The history of violence is the change of Kronberg's own tradition and the continuation of the undercurrent under the change. It is said that the change is because this film takes a commercial route and doesn't look as unacceptable as his previous films. Sex and violence are interspersed in the quiet town life with American values. There are big-name stars (the leading actor viggo mortensen once played Aragon in The Lord of the Rings), and the picture is exquisite and slightly sad. Howard, one of Hollywood's best film soundtracks, has long been the soundtrack of horror films and psychological thrillers. Grass Road, a large number of symphony fragments have played a moving role in rendering and strengthening the film narrative. However, under these normal and gentle surfaces, Kronberg's "personal style" or "taste" has not been completely erased and disappeared. Just like the same underground river, it still flows faintly under the normal narrative surface of the film, and occasionally there is a section exposed to the ground, which constitutes the unique texture and level of the film. It makes the audience get the dull excitement, fear or touch brought by ordinary Hollywood blockbusters. Personally, this tension is the greatest charm of the film.

At the beginning of the film, the audience can feel that there is something wrong with the director. How can he play down violence so lightly? It seems that killing a person is as simple and common as going to a convenience store to buy a packet of sweet doughnuts. Two men walked out of the motel in tandem. After the young man went out, he put a recliner at the door and got on the bus to talk. The quiet town near expressway is very hot. After that, the middle-aged man went to the front desk to "check out" and came back a few minutes later, complaining that the weather was too hot, looking for water to drink, and found that there was no water. The younger man took a bucket and went to Motel's water dispenser to pick up some. At this point in the film, the audience can't see any hint of violence. No matter what they do, these two people look no different from ordinary travelers, and the place where they live seems to be boring, as sleepy and listless as the weather at that time. When the young man walked into the motel, there was still an atmosphere of listlessness and indifference. He pressed the pay phone and turned the postcard rack. Then the camera slowly moved to the foreground. There is no foreshadowing, just like an unintentional glance. The audience saw a pool of blood in front of the camera! The appearance of violence here is set to be commonplace, and it is beyond measure, which is a kind of "interest" of the director. After that, the camera didn't follow the blood pool, and the director set up a "separation effect" here. Without looking at the blood pool, the young man went straight to the freezer, opened it, took a boring look, took out a bottle of canned drink, and then came to the water cooler, gently pushing away the trolley used by the cleaner to clean the guest room. At this time, the camera followed the movement of the cart and came to the cleaner who fell in a pool of blood, a body that had been dead for several minutes. The buzzing of flies around the body makes people numb, resulting in a kind of conditional nausea of death, including the lens cutting to the water dispenser. Under the special lighting effect, the trademark on the bucket forms an unknown floating object-like effect in the transparent and slightly turbid water, which is equally strange and depressing. Just a description of this kind of death, the director vividly interprets a kind of violent aesthetics by means of wanting to promote first and restraining, interrupting and alienating. However, this is not the climax. A door of the motel opened, and a little girl stood at the door with a doll in her hand, facing the young man in front of her, not knowing whether to call for help or run away. The sudden appearance of the little girl had a very tense effect. The young man was slightly surprised, and then smiled and said "hi" to his little sister like a big brother. Then the camera cuts behind him. He took out a gun pinned to his back, put one hand on his lips and said "shh", while the other hand holding the gun slowly pointed at the little girl. The shot went off and the picture turned black.

The beginning of this paragraph is very wonderful. At the same time, it tells the audience that the violence in this film is not just a story or plot, but the object of discussion in the metaphysical sense, which is the "signifier" that this film wants to achieve by telling a story. Then the film turned to Tom? The stall owner lives a quiet and happy life. This passage depicts Tom's gentle and cautious character, which seems a bit passive to Nuo Nuo. At the same time, it focuses on the love between Tom and his wife. The son was bullied at school but showed cowardice. Calm narrative, inserted some tiny foreshadowing. For example, a guy in a cafe said that when he was dating his wife, she woke up in the middle of the night and thought he was not her lover, but a killer. She stabbed him in the shoulder with a knife. This and Tom's wife later found out that the person who lived with him for many years was a vicious gangster killer on the East Coast twenty years ago.

The calm passage in this film describes Tom's happy life before the exposure of "Violence History", which is actually a bit sad and uneasy. The scene of Tom's wife driving him to work, the car running smoothly on the country road, the camera shooting from behind the car, the symphony playing, there is a kind of melancholy and desolation that the car doesn't know where to go. There are many similar rendering and paving paragraphs in the film, which not only makes the film rich and textured, but also brings a unique charm of emotional infection to the audience.

Next, Tom's "violent history" was slowly uncovered. In the film, Tom had to kill two people in order to protect his quiet life, and the close-up description of the person who was shot in the film also had obvious Kroeber's violent aesthetics. Trembling, his chin and nose were smashed to pieces. In mainstream movies, it is impossible to "look directly" or even "stare" at violence in such a detailed description of violence. And the "appreciation" of such a lens can undoubtedly bring a deep psychological hidden pleasure to the audience.

The tension in the film mentioned above continued until Tom went to Philadelphia to find his brother. After that, the plot development lost a little suspense. Tom easily killed several armed men in the castle, and the plot was a bit playful and "caricatured". In fact, this film is based on a famous cartoon. As a former killer, Tom's invincible skills are flawed in narrative. However, this is not the director's concern. In fact, the plot is not important to this film, although it is only a typical "thriller" and suspense film. The charm of the film lies not in the story, but in the way it is told. In the process of telling, there is something attached or hidden under the surface of the story.

It is inevitable for a movie to discuss its "theme". What does the director want to express? The film's title "Violence History" itself provides great convenience for "exposition", just as some American film critics use the title to say that "a violence history" is actually "a history of new york". This seems to me to be "over-interpretation". What is really interesting is the part of the film that is a bit like a flaw and ambiguous. Tom's wife's reaction back and forth. Before Tom's violent history was exposed, he and his wife were very loving. There is a passage inserted in the film, and his wife plays the sex between a high school cheerleading girl and Tom, which is bold and true. After Tom was found to be "Joey", his wife was very angry and felt cheated. Tom had "violent" sex with her on the stairs. When Tom was hospitalized for the first time, Tom asked his wife a little uneasily, don't you like me now? The wife said, no, I like it. The meaning of these things is difficult to explain simply. In fact, Tom's wife's attitude towards Tom's violent history in the movie should be ambiguous, at least not as simple and clear as her apparent anger. Tom's son, his condemnation of his father, and his radical words are actually more like provocation. This seems to be an "unspeakable" thing. For example, if you want to talk about human nature, ask yourself, your attitude towards violence is really simple, "Yes is yes, no is no", is this clear?