A History Of Violence (imdb | rotten tomatoes) got all kinds of buzz at the TIFF, and has some great reviews attached to it. Though it would have been nearly impossible, I wish I hadn’t read anything about the film before I watched it today. I knew where the shocking bits were about to happen, so it took some of the edge off. I say some because the movie has edge to spare, being Cronenberg and all. I was pleasantly surprised, actually; he didn’t go for the Cronenberg surreal, instead letting the frank brutality of the violence work on us for him. The analogy to recent US counter-terrorism action is clear, as is the broader historical truth that violence begets more violence. No, not begets; ensures. Demands.

There were also historical truths at play in No Direction Home (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I finished watching this evening. This Arthur Schopenhauer quote, for example: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” To see (and especially hear) the backlash against Bob Dylan‘s electric turn in the mid 60s — not just by the fans, but by his former fellow revolutionary musicians as well — was like seeing people in the first two phases of truth, not realizing that they were booing Dylan and questioning his musical integrity as he played (among other songs) what would later be recognized as the most significant musical document of the last half century: “Like A Rolling Stone”. But while the documentary focuses on those couple of years — between the infamous Newport Folk Festival and his motorcycle accident — the stories of how he came up, of who influenced him, of who he met along the way, of how he changed things, of how the world changed around him, of he loved and who he alienated, these are all emotional (especially, for me, three scenes: Dylan singing and playing the piano in a quiet room with Johnny Cash; a montage showing footage of JFK in Dallas the day he was shot while “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” plays; seeing Martin Luther King make his “I Have A Dream” speech during the march on Washington, which gets me pretty much every time anyway), and all fascinating.