Maria Bello is certainly not afraid of showing a little skin. Her sex scenes with Viggo Mortensen are sure to raise some eyebrows. She's got the acting chops to back-up her considerable beauty though. She's made a career of playing intricate characters and delivers the most emotionally complex performance of the film. She gave it her all and it certainly shows on screen.
Maria Bello: David [Cronenberg] likes to say that Viggo [Mortensen] and I limped onto set that day. My entire back was covered in black and blue and purple bruises. Viggo's elbow was out to here because he kept slamming it against the stair. So on a physical level it was quite painful, but I think we all so emotionally went for that scene. And David is the kind of director who makes you feel like you can go anywhere.
a history of violence sex scene
Maria Bello: The script was so tight and so good we didn't really need to. One scene that's not in the movie and I'm so mad it's not on the movie, because it was the hardest thing to shoot ever in my life. It was at a waterfall. In the original script, I pick him up from the diner that night, we go, and I say I want to be teenagers with you again. There's a waterfall and we shot it in Toronto in the end of October. It was so cold and we were naked. They had this jacuzzi there for us, this plastic jacuzzi with hot water, but I remember at the end of the night crying. It was just freezing and it's not in the movie.
Based on the 1997 graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vincent Locke, A History of Violence does feature its fair share of gore. But the true violence comes in the form of the emotional terror a seemingly harmless family man inflicts on his wife and children when his violent past comes back to call.
As a nation, we cannot outrun the violence on which America was founded. It is inherent in our pop culture and our history books. With A History of Violence, Cronenberg dares us to examine why we enjoy blood and gore so much. It may seem presumptuous for a Canadian to do so but as Americans, we are so steeped in the images of bombs bursting in air that it would likely take someone from just over the border to smack us around with a movie to recognize where we come from.
This film should have been NC 17 in my opinion. It was so graphic in the sex and violence areas which really ruined the film for me. What could have been a somewhat interesting plot became secondary in scope and importance to the showing of soft pornographic sex scenes and gruesome violence.
W Magazine recently posted an Instagram on their account, where they had some of the leading stars of cinema recall their favorite sex scenes. Margot Robbie, Charlize Theron, Bryan Cranston, Seth Rogen, and more all shared the most memorable and intimate clips they'd seen.
The centrepiece of the extras package is an eight-part documentary that gets up-close-and-personal with Cronenberg and the cast as they tackle key scenes. In addition to the usual issues of staging and dialogue, they discuss the themes and subtext driving the action. For instance, when Tom (Mortensen) shoots the bad guys in the diner, Cronenberg draws attention to a visceral reaction, which is exhilaration - not just for Tom but for the audience too. "Violence is a real and unavoidable part of our existence," he asserts, "And you can't really say it's never justified." However, Mortensen is also keen to get across that the violence is "not glamorised".
Later we see Maria Bello (Edie) flustering over a confrontation with Ed Harris (Fogerty) who ends up coaching her through the scene. It's obviously a moment of great vulnerability for Bello and, for us, offers a rare moment of intimacy with the actors. Two sex scenes were also tricky for both Bello and Mortensen - particularly the latter, more violent one. Cronenberg explains that he added these to reflect the change in tone for the relationship between Tom and Edie.
There's only one deleted scene, but it's presented with optional director's commentary and a separate making of featurette. It's a nightmare sequence that finds Ed Harris grinning like a maniac even though his chest has been blown apart like a ripe watermelon. It was cut because, as Cronenberg says, "It felt like it was from another movie." Indeed, in the featurette, he momentarily considers having Fogerty pull a gun from the smoking wound as a nod to his earlier work. "It would be an homage to myself which I'm not above doing," he explains, "but I think not." (That's bad news for the guy the big rubber fly suit...)
There's a brief demo of the subtle changes between the US cut of the film and the international cut in the Violence's History featurette. Basically, the sound of bone being crunched is subtler in the US version and blood dribbles as opposed to spurts. It's a prime example of how ridiculously finicky the American censors are. Going to the other extreme, the French crowd apparently cheered at the violent bits as revealed in Cronenberg's festival diary Too Commercial For Cannes. The director is gratified by this, telling the international press, "I wanted them to be complicit in it [the violence]... so I can deliver to them the paradox of enjoying something that, morally, you find reprehensible."
It's a subject that Cronenberg talks more about in his audio commentary. He picks on the cut between Tom shooting Leland (Stephen McHattie) and the close-up of Leland's jaw hanging in a bloody pulp off his face and explains that it's supposed to be jarring for the viewer. "If you're going to like the violence," he explains, "you have to accept the consequences of it. That, of course, has a lot to do with the theme of the movie." Certainly there's a lot of splatter on this DVD, but its dissection of the film's subtext is clean, efficient and compelling.
Invariably testing the audience and their attitudes to violence, the film wisely assesses American culture, prying into and provoking the recognized knowledge that every individual has the right to peace and cessation in their own home. And while it says and celebrates these accepted American freedoms, A History of Violence also observes gun culture as it eulogizes gun terrorism and the fetishizes that go along with it.
Known for surrealist films and a fascination with grotesqueries, Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg won accolades for this seemingly straightforward adaptation of John Wagner and Vince Locke's graphic novel A History of Violence. The tale introduces Tom Stall, an upstanding citizen of Millbrook, Indiana, an idyllic American small town where everyone seems to be on a first-name basis. Tom, portrayed by Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen, lives a happy, ordinary life with his pretty wife (Maria Bello), teenage son (Ashton Holmes), and young daughter (Heidi Hayes). But one day, two "bad men" walk into Tom's diner, intent on holding the place up and leaving no witnesses alive. In self-defense, Tom kills the two criminals and is labeled an American Hero by the media, though he is uneasy with all the attention. For good reason: soon, three more "bad men" come to town, one of whom (Ed Harris) claims to know Tom -- though he calls him Joey -- and is looking to settle an old score. A History of Violence is the kind of all-American movie that could only be made by someone from Canada, a country that's superficially similar to its southern neighbor but does not share its fascination with guns. Everything is a little too perfect, too nice in Millbrook, and from the unforgettable single-take opening sequence on, tension and dread hang heavy in the air. Cronenberg manages to have his cake and eat it too, crafting a film that works both as a revenge thriller and social critique. Performances from the entire cast are strong but not flashy, apart from William Hurt's brief, hammy, Oscar-nominated turn as a ghost from Tom's past. Although Cronenberg restrains his penchant for gore, the film's brutal acts still register viscerally -- making a strong case that no matter how justified, violence is rarely worth the consequences.
David Cronenberg has always been a name closely associated with the horror genre, and even when his films don't overtly contain the elements generally associated with the critically maligned genre, they can be just as horrifying as any out-and-out fright flick. This bold but shockingly low-key thriller is without question one of the reigning body-horror master's most mainstream cinematic outings to date (no videotape-swallowing orifices or medieval-looking medical instruments here); however, the film's depiction of the vicious cyclical nature of violence is as horrific and challenging as anything in the veteran director's notoriously gruesome filmography. The effectiveness of violence in any film is directly tied to stylistic choices utilized to portray the violence onscreen, and few directors are more aware of this fact than Cronenberg. By contrasting the horrific and often graphic acts of violence committed by the characters in A History of Violence with quiet scenes at the family dinner table or tender moments between husband and wife, Cronenberg punctuates the destructive actions of his characters in a manner that is undeniably effective for those looking for something deeper than the average revenge tale -- showing a filmmaker still very much in command of his material. As the dire situation steadily elevates and the outwardly peaceful protagonist is forced to act out in the same manner as his tormentors, Cronenberg reveals the character's true nature while showing enough faith in his audience to let the situation unfold naturally. This narrative restraint shows a filmmaker whose dramatic strengths are growing with age rather than weakening (a sad problem that seems to plague many genre filmmakers of Cronenberg's generation). Even the lesser-drawn characters in A History of Violence seem to have an added dimension of motivation that ties into the theories of violence presented in the film, with the more prominent supporting players, including Ed Harris and William Hurt, turning in particularly effective performances. Though some viewers may find it difficult to connect with the archetypal characters in A History of Violence on an emotional level, the message regarding the inherently cyclical nature of violence is both effectively clear and viscerally presented, offering a testament to Cronenberg's continuing willingness to challenge his audience while simultaneously crafting a compelling mainstream thriller. 2ff7e9595c