Violence is a destructive, inescapable component of human civilization.

The film “A History of Violence” explores the far-reaching presence of man’s deliberate compulsion to injure and dominate. Director David Croenberg takes the viewer on a brutal, thought-provoking odyssey, while demonstrating that no human being is immune to the savage grasp of human violence. Also, in a morally conflicted way, the film communicates the idea that sometimes violence is necessary for the greater good.

The protagonist of the story, played by Viggo Mortenson, is Tom Stall, a small-town diner owner with a dark past.

After he thwarts an attempted robbery of his diner and kills two evildoers, the media thrusts Tom into the spotlight and hails him as a hero. The publicity attracts a group of ruthless East Coast mobsters to the town, and they are convinced that Tom is a long-lost associate named Joey.

The leader of the criminal group is Ed Harris’ chilling character, Carl Fogarty, a hardened crook with a horrifying facial scar. Fogarty and his henchmen are relentless in their harassment of Tom and his family, as they insist Tom return with them to Philadelphia.

As the movie progresses, the story presents the role of violence in interactions between good and evil, man and woman and father and son. The film highlights the instinctual allure of violence in the masculine world and navigates its connection with sex and child rearing. Fortunately, the director guides the film with an unexpected tenderness, which allows the violence to occur without undermining the ideal that humanity is capable of goodness.

Ultimately, the movie emphasizes duality. People cannot know order without chaos, pain without pleasure or violence without kindness. The contrast gives meaning in human life.

Like the inhabitants of Plato’s cave, people must suffer in darkness before they can embrace the light.