Once again, the generous sponsorship of the Fruit Stand/DVD store made this review possible. Be sure to stop by and enjoy a 50% discount if you’re not American!
I’ve said I don’t enjoy writing movie reviews, so I’ll try to skirt around specifically “reviewing” the movie in that exact term, but it’ll be tough considering the movie is intertwined with its message.
Usually when someone goes out of his or her way to create something “deep,” “thought-provoking,” “challenging” or the like, the final product doesn’t end up being any of those things, if only because if it draws too much attention that goal (“deepness”) instead of the movie itself. It’s incestuous, but I’ll link here to my review of Inside Man with my brief commentary on its very out-of-continuity “thought-provoking” scene of the seemingly vicious bank robber being disgusted by a Grand Theft Auto-look-alike. A History of Violence practically begs for over-analysis starting with its vague but simultaneously pointed title. The director, David Cronenberg, is very much on the record talking about the philosophical issues raised by his movie.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind. (bonus points for invoking a U2 song in a faux-deep manner!)
Most “deep” movies become grossly over-analyzed, with the arguers forgetting what the movie was about and what happened in it (or what the movie wasn’t about and what didn’t happen it””Donnie Darko fans, I’m looking in your direction). Throw in some psycho-babble (“Munich was about how Israel became self-actualized in the 1970’s and 80’s”), and you’re good to go. Without putting it terms of whether it was a good movie or not, Munich certainly had enough going on it to not need this over-analysis. (Okay, to be fair, some people have complained that not much of anything happened in the movie, other than Eric Bana sweating like a maniac when he was getting his pump on.) Oddly enough, “A History of Violence” needs this discussion; not a whole lot happens in the movie; it could basically be considered an immediate and direct sequel to Goodfellas. (I liked A History of Violence enough that I won’t ruin the “how” and “why” that lingers throughout the story for our readership, but if you’ve seen Goodfellas, you’ll understand what I mean about it being the next step in the Goodfellas story.)
Sure, plenty happens in A History of Violence, but the characters spend so little time onscreen reflecting on it; the extent is really “how long have you lied to me? And did I marry your past or just an identity you arbitrarily created?” The viewers are in the same position as the characters after the open-ended conclusion of the movie. Like the characters, the viewers are asking themselves, “What’s in me? What am I capable of if something needed to be done?” “Would I be able to leave behind my “
5 responses to “Navel Gazing Part 1: A History of Violence”
i know that saying “the book was better” is an automatic gut reaction for almost every fan of any book, but i can’t help but say this to everyone who liked this movie.
so many movies from books, or graphic novel as the case may be, either try to hard to be exactly like the book, and i understand the difficulty in translating from book to screen, but this was a book that was DESTINED to be an amazing movie. it had three acts, it had a message, it wasn’t empty at all. it made people consider all the things that the movie did, but it wasn’t empty. a lot of the movies based on bookswill clue you in to how bad they are in the trailer or in the first 20 minutes, and that’s what makes it so bad in this instance. the first 20 or 30 minutes are straight out of the book. the casting is perfect, they all give great performances, and the few subtle changes fit perfectly with the tone. i don’t even mind that they added the sex scenes. even they added something to the point about the nature of violence. it showed the change when his past came out. and then it went to vacuous shit. i’m sure if i hadn’t read the book i’d feel differently, but i did, so i don’t.
hell, even my dad read it and came to me all excited, “did you say they made this into a movie? this will be a great fucking movie!” and then we saw it and we both felt like we were kicked in the balls by mr. cronenberg. the last two acts were completely different. the book is even more jarring and shows the past for what it really is. you get an idea of exactly why the is the way he is., instead of just hearing that he did bad things you’d get to see some small oprtion of it, and even get to see how bad the people are that are coming after him. and it’s not a sibling rivalry, it’s a hwhole lot bigger than that. i know i’m not getting to any specific point, but i hate spoilers and don’t want to read the book. honestly, i think anybody who liked th movie should read the book. that’s the proper order. if you read the book first then watch the movie will be the most disappointing movie ever.
i’m not sure if this rambling comment actually went anywhere, but the point is that i intend to become a really famous director (or producer or writer) one day and make this graphic novel into the movie it has the potential to be.
dan, i saw this movie last year in the theatre, and it was solid, but that’s not why i write. i would have sent this in a personal e-mail, but i forgot your gmail address.
annnyways, a couple of weeks ago at my current internship, one of my bosses referred to me as a “big galoot”, which sparked a memory of our one-time debate including you, kurt, andy, and myself as to whether “big galoot” is a positive or negative term. my boss clearly meant it as a jovial referrence, as he is also eighty inches tall, leading me to believe in my own argument concluding in that a big galoot is more a term to describe an “goofy-yet-affable” fellow, as opposed to your more sinister take on the phrase.
so nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyaaah-naaaaaaah-naaaaaaaaaah. let me know when/if you’ll be back in evanston, a reunion is in order.
Jeff: It looks you’ve fallen for that oh-so-typical trap of corporate America… always thinking your boss is right. It’s sad to see such an independent thinker such as yourself fall victim this to this philosophy of supplicants. Your boss is not right. I am.
I’m not sure I’ll be heading back over to Evanston soon. I do the “grown-up” job thing, so my schedule isn’t very flexible. I did just get back from 5 weeks in China for my company though. I doubt you’re going to be headed to China when I’m there again, though.
…who the hell would give you a grown-up anything, master fuller?
haahaha, just kidding. for serious though, it’s neither you nor my boss who is right, but it is rather myself that is correct; my boss is simply true in his name-calling because it agrees with my view of the world, and you are simply in the wrong but disagreeing with me.
nice try, holmes.
[…] August 11th, 2006 Nate Oh, those kids. Always at it. You guys really shouldn’t’ve. So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word “milestone”, and don’t believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell. The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005… remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge? Dan’s first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled chese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”, a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan’s opinion of My opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”. Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn’t last, which seems to have been proven false. October seemed to be us finding our footing. November saw Dan’s Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of “Coach”, and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he’s an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth”paste” that doesn’t work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep. November didn’t see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining. December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam’s first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a suprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert’s take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing. December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews. 2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because “Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego”, and “The Simpsons” after season 9 is so easy to complain about. January’s topics fell off a little. February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan’s digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper. Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking. March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega-reviews by Dan. April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that’s going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star. For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan’s contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Davinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything. June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn’t designed to suit his needs. July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase… and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shayamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I’d give it a 3.5 This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn’t too shabby. In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn’t be able to keep it fresh, that we’d run out of ideas, and that we wouldn’t be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was “It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs.” Well, I think we’ve significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We’re still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the ‘A’ game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I’d be willing to bet that we’ve provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near fututre. On the upside, it hasn’t gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs. For all of these reasons, I’m willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I’ve also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I’m gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five. And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review. […]