As soon as you look under the hood, you look under there [and it’s] complicated and messy. And so as well thought out and structured as his movies are, they always feel on some level kind of awkward. They’re uncomfortable to watch because people in reality are not neat and tidy and orderly and always predictable and always the same. He’s a great observer of human nature and on that level, you know, I do feel like we’re kindred spirits. But that’s probably not unique to me. I really think that any actor that worked with him probably felt a connection with him. He’s very good at communicating how he wants to tell a story and how you can help him do that.”
Viggo Mortensen Explains His Attraction to “A History of Violence:” “Well, what made me curious initially was more him than the script. I read the script and thought it was interesting and that it could be good. It could be a very layered and thought-provoking story like it became. Maybe not as good as it became, but you never know, but good. It just depended who was directing it.
I thought that this is a story that could very easily, and most likely, be a lot more superficial; a lot more of an exploitation movie that would please some people, be for people that like just out-and-out violence or strong emotional material. That might be immediately gratifying but it wouldn’t leave you thinking much afterwards. Not a lot, not for very long, and not in any profound way. Even good directors would have made that mistake, would have just gone to town on the violence and just missed a lot of the subtlety.
When I heard [Cronenberg] was doing it and wanted to meet me, I thought that would be interesting to see what he thinks. The way the script was then and it became leaner and leaner as we approached shooting, there were things in the back of my mind, questions about it. But anything I asked him, any doubt or reservation I had, he also had the same ones. That’s what I mean by being in step with him. We right away were in agreement and we were like real partners. Then each other person that came aboard, I think, was helped to feel the same – that we were all on the same page. It sounds simple but it doesn’t happen very often. So the first day of shooting, everybody knew what we were doing. The structure was, and the intention was, very clear. But within that skeleton, that structure, we had room to do anything.
There was no limit to what we could try, and how subtle you could try to be, also. A lot of directors, they don’t even look for it or appreciate it. They might see a movie that has that and think, ‘Oh that’s interesting. I’ll make a movie like that.’ But they can’t because they don’t have the interest or the knack or the understanding of human behavior in the same way, and they don’t take the time. You see in this movie, you know it moves along and it’s very tightly wound – if you look at it carefully, there are a lot of scenes that are quite long and he trusts the audience to be smart. To accept it and embrace it, really, that things take their time.
He has a great sense of rhythm. It’s like a musical score. There’s a prelude and it starts and you’re like, ‘What is this? I’m not sure.’ And then all of a sudden your questions vanish because you become absorbed. It picks up momentum and never lets up. And yet within that tightly-paced story, there are moments where people are allowed real time to react and change and you can see it. You can see, say between my son and I, between many characters that the time is taken to really see how people feel. There’s a lot of directors who don’t have the patience for it, and don’t understand that that doesn’t mean that the movie dies or slows down. It actually means that you’re more involved as an audience. It takes you along. When it’s done well it looks simple.
A movie like this on some level- on the surface – it looks simple but it’s not. It’s like when you go and you listen to a piece of music or you see a classical play performed and the time just goes. And you’re thinking, ‘Wow, that seemed effortless.’ But you would never think, ‘Well, I can just go up there and play the violin like that.’ It just looks like it’s easy. He just makes it look effortless because he’s such a great artist, storyteller.”
Page 2: Viggo Mortensen on Sex and Violence and Preparing for "A History of Violence"
