Eastern Promises

What a pleasure to watch a great artist at the top of his game.

David Cronenberg is one of the filmmakers who showed me that the medium could be used for more than assembly-line product. From VIDEODROME to THE FLY to DEAD RINGERS to NAKED LUNCH, here was a guy who was willing to tackle uncomfortable and difficult subjects through characters who felt like real people. Cronenberg made honest, artful but not artsy, films of which anyone could be proud.

He didn’t always connect with popular audiences, however, and it seems that he tried to appeal to mainstream adults with his last two films, the brilliant A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and his most recent, EASTERN PROMISES. Thing is, for a guy as skilled as Cronenberg, appealing to a mainstream adult audience and selling out are not the same thing. Rather, he has figured out how to make challenging, adult fare with broad appeal. These last two movies are as serious, as legitimate, as anything he’s done. They also pop, keeping the viewer engaged and enrapt from beginning to end.

With EASTERN PROMISES, he kept this viewer engaged and enrapt even after the end. Though this film tells a complete story, that story is one of a chapter in the lives of its characters. But these characters, played by a stellar cast including Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Vincent Cassel, are so compelling that I’ve been spending much of the last 18 hours thinking about how they came to the beginning of the film, and where they went after the ending.

Here’s the hook: Watts is a midwife in a London hospital. When a young Russian prostitute dies on the birthing table, Watts finds the diary in the prostitute’s handbag. Hoping to find the girl’s relatives and place the newborn infant, she has the diary translated. But young Russian prostitutes are not independent, and soon Watts has the attention of the Russian mob. Enter Mortensen, a low-level driver in the organization, and we’re off.

Watts gave a masterful performance. I completely bought her as a lower-middle class Londoner, just as I completely bought Mortensen (also brilliant in HISTORY) as the Russian driver. Speaking of performances, both Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel, both cast against type, absolutely shine in this film. If you’re going to perform on this stage, you’d better bring your A game. They do, and the doubt and unpredictability created by going against the viewer’s expectations of these actors pays off wonderfully well.

I started these comments with my closer, so I can only reiterate it. I would, however, like to add a small explanation of my choice of words. Mr. Cronenberg has worked with the same people for years. The same crew, the same costume designer, the same composer. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all great. There are so many talented people involved in creating a film, however, that it’s easier to anthropomorphize the entire process in the form of one individual, the director, than to detail the individual contributions of all those involved.

Perhaps I should have written that it’s a pleasure to watch great artists at the top of their game. It’s just as true. EASTERN PROMISES is well worth seeing.