Eastern Promises

Be my little baby

2007

Review: September 28, 2007

Director: David Cronenberg

Starring: Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassell, Armin Meuller-Stahl

If you like, not necessary.

THE SETUP:

British woman gets involved with Russian gangsters.

DISCUSSION:

This is one of those movies I saw a few weeks ago and, despite liking it very much, haven’t been very moved to write about it. Perhaps because I don’t feel that I have that much to add to the general criticism coming out about it. Anyway, you should definitely pack off to see it, and I think the less you know about it the better.

We open with this guy at a Russian barber. The barber lets in Kirill, played by Vincent Cassel, who slits the customer’s throat. Cut to a young woman dragging herself in to a pharmacy, bleeding from her crotch. Within a few minutes she has been taken to a hospital and died during childbirth. Naomi Watts as Anna is a midwife there, and takes the diary the girl had in order to find a relative to take the baby. If she doesn’t find a relative, the baby will enter the ward system, which is bad. By now we have figured out that all this is taking place in London.

So Anna, who has a Russian uncle who disapproves of her, finds a card in the diary advertising a restaurant. She goes there, where she meets Armin Meuller-Stahl as Semyon. He seems very interested in helping her translate the diary. She also meets Kirill, and Viggo Mortensen as Nikolai, chauffeur to the Russian family. Nikolai is being groomed to accept larger responsibilities, and we see him efficiently get rid of the corpse of the guy from the beginning by snipping off the ends of his fingers and breaking his teeth.

SPOILERS > > >
In here we have found out that Anna used to be married and had a miscarriage. Her uncle reads enough of the diary to know that Semyon raped the girl—it is his baby—and that she was trafficked into the country as a sex slave.

Meanwhile Anna and Nikolai are having this very low-level flirtation, and Nikolai is shooting up the ranks of the Russian underworld, because he is smart and sensible and Kirill, who feels he is due advancement for being Semyon's son, is sloppy and hedonistic.

It all briskly moves along to a satisfying conclusion. In here we have found out that Kirill is secretly homosexual, which is used by the movie in a very integral, moving, and non-offensive way. It becomes a bit of a pivotal point by the end. There is also a bracingly violent struggle in a steam bath that is one of the film’s highlights. The movie ends with an image that is very much like the final image of Blue Velvet, playing its sentimentality against all of the violence that has preceded it.
< < < SPOILERS END

To me, this one succeeded where A History of Violence left me a little cold. This one has a very exciting, propulsive rhythm and scenes of unbearable suspense. There are bursts of violence like in Violence, but here they are even more feral and brutal, with the much-discussed bath house fight being the banner example. A friend I went with was turned off by the violence—particularly a scene in which we see Nikolai snip off a corpse’s fingers, but I think it is necessary for us to see that to viscerally understand the nature of Nikolai’s job, and Cronenberg shows us just enough to let us know, then discreetly cuts away. The violence and brutality here is also played off against a current of tenderness, and for me the combination worked extremely well.

All the players were excellent, with Mortensen being the best I’ve ever seen him, Watts projecting a guarded wish to trust and love, Cassel excellent as a one-note character who reveals multiple layers of defenses that deepen his portrayal, and Mueller-Stahl projecting truly terrifying quiet menace. I’m not much into gangster movies, but if I have to see one, I want it to be one like this.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Yes! It’ll hold up fine on video, but it is preferable to see it in the sustained concentration the theater provides.