Eastern Promises. Directed by David Cronenberg. Vigo Mortenson (Gringo as a Russian guy); Vincent Cassell (French guy as a Russian guy); Armin Meuller-Stahl (KrauGerman guy as a Russian guy); Naomi Watts (spunky British fee-male as spunky Brito-Russian fee-male); some other guys as Russian guys but not sure if they’re real actual Russian guys.
Note: No real actual Russians were harmed during the making of this film. And no real actual Russian was spoken: Since it would be way too hard for all the actors to learn long dialogue in Russian (for instance, there are 52 vowels in Russian and they’re all pronounced “chks”; curiously, there are only 2 consonants, but they’re also pronounced “chks.” Go figure!), the speakers simply mouth nonsense lines or whatever comes into their heads; the film guys record that, run it backwards at half speed, then dub it in over the action on celluloid for each scene. Voilà: Russian! When the DVD comes out, you can play it backwards at home and actually hear Naomi Watts reciting George Thomas Lanigan’s “Ahkoond of Swat” (“The Ahkoond of Swat/Guess what?/Is not…” and on and on. Try it.
Anyhow. A powerful flick about nothing in particular although it rubs up against dark themes: drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, naked guy wrestling with linoleum knives (same thing), immigrant assimilation, the ozone layer, funny accents. The story itself is not particularly appealing or even novel. A lost baby finds an unlikely savior. It’s the same theme, oddly, as the recent and quite watchable—though maybe not for little Tiffany and young Spottiswood—Shoot’Em Up featuring another dark, shambling hero, Clive Owen. Worth noticing: where Owen’s savage loner sports a grubby wardrobe, unkempt hair, and three-day stubble, Mortenson’s Nikolai is fastidious in neo-gangster shiny suit-and-tie, shiny sleeked-back hair, shinysmooth (as a baby’s) cheeks. The Brits tumble into dreck as the immigrants spiff up.
What is stunning about this flick is the presence on the screen of Mortenson, who’s done a couple of interesting films lately, notably A History of Violence and Hidalgo, as if perhaps to atone for his ongoing role in Lord of the Tower of Two King’s Rings Endless-ology and—worse—G.I. Jane, where he plays the sadistic SEAL, to whom Demi Moore addresses the now immortal: “Umph my umph umph…” Mortenson’s sort of vaguely Eastern features (salient cheekbones, cleft chin, feral eyes) rivet; he remains a personage of profound, tenebrous mystery, mystery accented just enough by the (see above) Russian that punctuates his utterances at regular intervals. The story unfolds in rain-sodden shadow amid the somber world of brutal expatriates scrapping for dignity, power, shiny suits in a foreign land along the mean streets of a decaying metropolis (London) and its population of badteeth bourgeois zombies. Nikolai stands much of the time stark still as events swirl around him, but when he commits to action, it’s explosive and vicious.
Incongruously, though, he’s the soul of tenderness and repository of deep understanding of the Way of the World, its fathomless depravity and the futility of decency. Nevertheless, and at some risk, he does the decent thing. But why? We never get the answer to that, likely the one weakness of the flick (that I see anyhow… unless you count that the Watts girl doesn’t contrive to shed any of the fluff she’s swaddled in so that the only bare flesh in this thing is a) the baby’s and b) Mortenson’s… and a whole bunch of that, whoa! Every guy’s nightmare: naked in a knife fight. Brrrrrr…
Goes like this. Anna (Naomi Watts: first generation Russian nursie in London) assists at the death of a young mother—drug-addict and who troubled young woman—but manages to save the child. The girl has left no identification save a small diary, written… in Russian (maybe). Anna seeks translation of the thing, an account of the poor girl’s migration from the Ukraine to the U-train, subsequent exploitation under the thumb (and umph umph) of restauranteur Semyon, smarmy Russian pater familias who runs mobster activities among the Beluga vuot Pazjevayeti (Russian for “guy in a shiny suit with the wrong tie… and a linoleum knife”). Wouldn’t you know it, Anna stumbles on precisely this guy to deliver the diary to. Semyon—occupied just now trying to straighten out his truant son Kyril (which I think is a lot like Cyril only, you know, Russianer), played for all it’s worth by Vincent Cassell, who favors girls, vodka, and men, not necessarily in that order—not slow to figure out the implications of the diary, decides that Anna and the baby must snuff it. Meanwhile, Nikolai (Mortenson), the factotum (Latin for “driver”), nannies Kyril while he rises in the ranks of the Beluga, whose principal output is tattoos.
Will Nikolai save the baby without imperiling his position in the mob? Will he (ub)dothe lithe and limber—if self-righteous—Anna? Will Kyril have an epiphany (like his eponymous Saint)? Will anybody ever step into a Turkish bath again?
Aristotle has left us some vaporous assertions to the effect that tragedy turns on plot, epic on character. We’d be epic here around Nikolai (“Sing to me, O Muse, the man…”) except for a subsequent declaration that tragedy leaves the hero outside the social circle—not dead necessarily but outside, exiled, ostracized, alien, alone—so we might be tempted to go with tragic… Violent flick yet nobody dies (oh, maybe a couple of the Belugas, but nobody important…). Cinematic syncretism (Greek for “Can’t decide if I want Carob Bean Vanilla or Cherry Garcia…”), maybe, but if unsatisfying asdénouement (French for “Oh, hell… gimme one of each.”), plenty catchy as entertainment for us gummy bear dummies. Almost hope there’ll be an Eastern Promises II. Chorascho spaciba.