A History of Violence - 6

Based on a graphic novel written by John Wagner and art by Vince Locke, this film tells the story of how violence attaches itself to human life and starts to drive our decisions in many areas of our lives. In some ways it is a social commentary on the pervasiveness of violence in American society. It is hard to talk about this film without spoiling the plot turns and the like so if you definitely plan to watch this film and haven't yet, you may want to stop reading. This may be the toughest review I have yet written for a couple of reasons. First, I both liked the film and found it frustrating to watch. On a technical level the film is not well made. The director was not able to show the passage of time very well and there were points in which things were happening that seemed disorienting because they didn't give viewer enough time to recognize the change in time (for example, there is a sequence in which the main character Tom is in his diner, then at home, then back at the diner, all without reference to whether a few days have past, which I suspect, or if it is the same day. There are other points in the film that suffer from this same flaw.) The film also suffers from not gaining the audiences trust, which means that one is suspicious which makes belief and caring for the characters that much harder. The second frustration is that this film story is a good and needed one in a lot of ways, but it is not a film that I would recommend to very many people, in fact I would discourage some from seeing this film. When it comes to the discernment of this film I think there are only a small minority of people that can deal with the emotional and intellectual challenge that this film poses (That is probably an elitist view but needs to be said).
The good things about this story is that is shows the tension that divides the human heart between good and evil and makes being human complex. In the story the characters deal with what a changed and new life might look like but not having the insight to understand their own past and what that means for the present and the future, especially in the fragility of human relationships. One of the strong points of the film is in identifying with the main character and seeing that the enemy is within rather than something that can be killed off externally (Although the old women who love to talk during the film sitting behind us saw violence as part of the solution). What this film needs is a little dose of the philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas writes at length about how behavior is shaped by the habits (following Aristotle) and that is how we truly change and can do good. Aquinas would ask, does our culture help us habituate violence or non-violence, and what does that tell us about who we are, both as a community as well as our own personal identity? The end of the film attempts to show the grace needed to live in a world that is often deceptive and hard, but the director can't pull it off because it seems contrived after the flow of the rest of the film (for a good example of how a director can do this see: Places of the Heart). For the discerning viewer there are many points of discussion, that is why I would rank this film a 6.