Wednesday, January 23, 2008
When the ordinary meets evil: A History of Eastern Violent Promises
As individual works, David Cronenberg's films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises stand as strong, multi-dimensional thrillers and melodramas with a level of depth not usually found in popular film entertainments. Those qualities are expanded almost exponentially when considered as a linked set, which I believe they will to some degree almost always be considered by critics, historians, and movie fans. This linkage will be due to having same actor and director, similar theme and tone, but also because they are just flat out very good and well-crafted films.The themes are both universal and basic as well as compelling: We are almost all ordinary people living out our lives, but there is a dark side filled with organized machinations of badness out there as well. What happens when we step over into it accidentally? How do we change? How do we respond?
The second area these Cronenberg/Mortenson collaborations address is the one of identity and illusion, of not assuming that everyone is who they say they are. The mounds of criticism and ruminations online about these films (which these buffet bits are added to that bucket) sometimes mention that Violence and/or Promises are essentially classic-styled westerns. And I see them asking the question, How really black is that hat and how did it get that way?
I saw Eastern Promises about a week ago and quickly pulled up A History of Violence as soon as I could thereafter. I wish there were three or four more of these modern noirs ready to put in the que. One hopes that Cronenberg will continue to explore and produce more work of this kind of quality in this stage of his career with the same kind of abandon he gave to gore, exploding heads and fly ooze in his earlier years.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:55 AM
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