Another comment, after reading Rosenbaum's review
I just got a chance to read Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of AHOV, to which he gives his highest rating, "masterpiece." Now that thanks to Oscar I know Rosenbaum exists, I pay attention to what he says. I know how astute, knowledgeable, and responsible he is. Can I take a minute to look at what he wrote about A History of Violence, and show why I don't buy into it?
It's funny how he says that in his café "defense" Stalls "deftly and definitively" "responds" "to the violent threats of two killers"; that's more than misleading. It's like the CIA Vietnam euphemism, "to terminate with extreme prejudice," for assassinate. It sets up a sudden brutal killing as nifty heroism, and buys into the movie's easy logic of making Tom an instant hero inevitable, which it just isn't. (A really "deft" response would have been to disable the two thugs and turn them over to the cops, not to murder them.)
I don't get what Rosenbaum says next: that a movie can't be both a popular thriller and an art film at once, but Cronenberg "comes close to pulling off this feat." Can you or can't you? Since this is crucial to Rosenbaum's praise of the movie, its failure for me to make any clear sense is also devastating.
Every moment of the movie can be seen as "some kind of cliché," Rosenbaum says, but in spite of that (he also says) you can't say it "plays as cliché." Well, why not? I think you can. Rosenbaum says Cronenberg is pulling off a magic trick, but he doesn't explain how or why. The two sex scenes, R. says, "expose more layers of personality than we can possibly keep up with.." Pure assertion: actually, the dichotomies in the two sex scenes are quite simple. Rosenbaum talks some about laughter during the son's scenes by two audiences, a more adult one and a young one, saying it came at the same time. I don't know that that proves anything. There are more than two Chicago audiences to consider if one's judging responses. And then, abruptly, the review ends. One page, to prove a movie is a masterpiece. One of his most disappointing reviewing efforts. And once again, I think what this illustrates is that A History of Violence is all in people's heads, and moreover, in the case of critics and film buffs, quite often it's in their heads before they've even seen the film. That's because, as Oscar has said, this is a movie that's good to talk about. In fact it's better before you've seen it. It's the idea of the movie that thrills, not the actual execution.
The relatively simple film -- even Rosenbaum admits it's ridden with clichés -- provides a kind of Rorscach blot into which people have read all sorts of complexity; Rosenbaum is just claiming the complexity is there. Nothing he says actually proves it.