HURTS SO GOOD CRONENBERG'S 'A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE' NO LESS THOUGHT-PROVOKING FOR ITS MAINSTREAM APPEAL.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

``A History of Violence'' is getting rapturous reviews as David Cronenberg's most thoughtful, accessible and relevant movie ever.

But he and the film's stars, Viggo Mortensen (``Lord of the Rings'') and Maria Bello (``The Cooler,'' ``Coyote Ugly''), want to get the word out that their picture is fun, too.

At least they had fun making it. In a way.

``We were scared of each other during some scenes,'' Bello admits. ``The day after that scene on the stairs, Viggo and I limped in. I was covered from head to toe with black-and-blue marks. I bit the inside of Viggo's mouth, so it was all swollen and his arm was all swollen. We both went there.''

And that was a love scene. All in a day's work for Cronenberg, whose highly literate thrillers ``The Fly,'' ``Dead Ringers,'' ``Crash'' (not the one about L.A. racial dysfunction; the more alarming one), ``Spider'' and many more are known for going to psychosexual extremes no others dare approach.

But despite the mild-for-Cronenberg couplings (they're between two long-married people, after all, and the other one is a nice little fantasy involving a cheerleading costume) and a few shocking but straightforward incidents of the title commodity, ``Violence'' is more humorous and easier to follow than most of the Canadian director's work.

Until, as with all his stuff, you think about it.

``It's a simple narrative on the surface,'' Mortensen explains. ``The setting, certainly. And there are certain things that remind one of genre imagery that you've seen before, whether it's action movies or crime movies or Westerns. There are a lot of elements that look familiar. But it's kind of like the family itself. Everything that looks normal, in the end, isn't really. And like a lot of David's movies, at the end you say, 'Well, is anyone really normal?' ''

Very loosely adapted from a graphic novel, ``Violence'' unfolds in an idealized, rural Indiana town. Soft-spoken Tom Stall (Mortensen) runs a diner, his wife Edie (Bello) is a lawyer, and they have two nice kids with no more than the usual growing-up traumas.

Life is good and peaceful. Then Tom stops two psychopaths from shooting up his restaurant, becomes a media hero, and is soon visited by Philadelphia gangsters who are convinced he's their old rival, Joey Cusack. Matters deteriorate from there.

``The movie is different for me,'' Cronenberg says, ``primarily because most of my movies begin with characters who are eccentric or marginal or outsiders or even grotesque, and then I try to bring the audience into the movie and seduce them into some kind of empathy with those characters.

``This movie is kind of an inside-out version of that. I'm actually starting with a group of characters who are very familiar, very accessible, very recognizable, then I take the audience along with those characters to a very strange and dark place.''

Some viewers have seen a darker statement than Cronenberg intended. A hit at last spring's Cannes Film Festival and the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival, ``Violence'' is being hailed by some as an allegory for 21st-century America's schizoid embrace of family values and war-making.

Surprisingly easygoing for a guy whose movies have been defined by exploding heads and mutant medical conditions, Cronenberg shrugs off such interpretations as, for the most part, wrong.

``At the Cannes press conference, a couple of journalists wanted to turn it into an attack on the U.S.,'' Cronenberg says. ``Being the contrarian that I am, I said, 'Look, there's not a nation in the world that was not founded on violence of some kind, and the suppression of native peoples or whoever happened to own the territory before.' So, if you want to get philosophical about it, we're talking about the human condition, rather than just a particular U.S. kind of focus.

``What I would say is that there is a kind of Western tone to the movie. One man with a gun protecting his family and his property from the bad guys with guns. That Western mythology is evoked by the president. It's that angle that people who are interested in that kind of interpretation have been edging toward. But I have to say, it's pretty much of a stretch. The movie is simply not an overtly political movie.''

Mortensen, an actor whose own political activism led him to visit Cindy Sheehan's anti-war camp this summer, equates the unexpected yet restrained way in which Cronenberg stages the film's violence with its fundamentally nonpartisan stance.

``A lot of directors would have made a splatter movie, would have made a meal out of the physical violence and missed all the shadings,'' the actor says. ``And maybe there are a few, probably very intelligent, directors who may have tried to make a real liberal-minded, politically provocative movie in some pointed way. I don't think it's that simple. I think it's a more universal story.''

Bello sees the film's explorations of violence and sexuality indicative of a more primal human theme: the impossibility of ever really knowing another person, no matter how intimately you're connected to them.

``Perhaps it's in general, hiding that passionate animal instinct,'' she reckons. ``And when it's hidden, it comes out in horrible ways. I wouldn't go all the way to say that's why wars are started, but I think there's a seed of something there. When we repress those demons, they're going to find a way to come out.''

But really, making the movie was a lot of fun.

``I particularly like to have a really relaxed, funny atmosphere on the set,'' Cronenberg says, adding (and we're not sure how facetiously), ``In fact, I've heard that Ingmar Bergman's sets were laugh riots, too.''

``I was surprised that he was such a sweet guy,'' Bello adds of the 62-year-old director. ``I thought he was going to be strange. But he could be just the most down-to-earth, lovely family guy you've ever met.''

And despite his penchant for the mind-bendingly outre, Cronenberg insists that he's tried to make a commercial movie for one of the few times in his life.

``For sure,'' the director says. ``Part of it is just being a responsible filmmaker. This is a $32 million movie, 'Spider' (his last film, a hard-to-watch study of an unraveling schizophrenic) was $8 million. So it was understood by everybody that this had to be more accessible than something like 'Spider' or 'Crash.' We all went into it with our eyes open, knowing what kind of movie we were making.

``We hope it will find a relatively big audience, compared with my normal moviemaking, but you never know.''

Leave it to Cronenberg to end on an ominous note. But for fans concerned that their hero's vision may somehow have been compromised, no worries. Mortensen, at least, expects that they'll be tickled pink.

``Some people say 'A History of Violence' is not like David's usual movies, it's more mainstream,'' the actor acknowledges. ``But I think it's every bit as complex and thought- provoking as his other movies.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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(1 -- 2 -- color) Ed Harris, left, and Viggo Mortensen star in ``A History of Violence,'' which director David Cronenberg, below, insists has no political agenda: ``We're talking about the human condition, rather than just a particular U.S. kind of focus.''