The thing that is so infinitely pleasing about any David Cronenberg film is that no matter what the tone of the movie is, you never know what to expect. All of his movies have their comical, touching and philosophical moments, examining themes much deeper than the subject matter at hand. But no matter what direction he steers one in, the expectation of brutal violence is always right around the corner, threatening to pounce at any moment.
Eastern Promises is no exception. The movie is an examination of the Russian Mafia presence in modern London. The movie opens with Anna, an obstetrician (played by Naomi Watts) who has recently lost her child and moved back home with her mother. She delivers the baby of a 14-year-old Russian girl who dies during labor. Emotionally vulnerable, Anna latches onto the baby, using the deceased girl's diary as a way to find the child's rightful home and atone for her own loss.
Finding a card in the diary, she contacts Semyon, a Russian restaurant owner, to ask him to translate it for her. Unbeknownst to her, he is a Mafia member with deep connections, and it is here that she first encounters Nikolai (played by Viggo Mortenson), a driver for the owner's son who knows more about the inner workings than he should. Anna struggles to do the right thing while becoming entangled in a world where conceptions of right and wrong are practically nonexistent.
The movie is an interesting examination of a dying culture. Cronenberg gives an in-depth look at the practices and prejudices of Russian culture. He focuses much of the movie on the backrooms of the London underbelly, displaying pockets of life where transplanted Russians desperately hold on to the old ways in a foreign land through lavish dinners, trips to the steam bath and a tattooing initiation carried from the motherland. He is not afraid to confuse the audience, choosing not to subtitle many of the conversations in order to enhance the mysteriousness of such a strange world. These scenes are contrasted with the dreary expansiveness of modern London. Anna lives a simple life, motorcycling around a familiar landscape that seems isolated and bland. She is a lonely doctor who struggles for connection in a city where the death of a 14-year-old girl is a nothing more than a statistic.
While the pace is at times slow, Cronenberg keeps the audience hooked by alluding to the intense violence that constantly bubbles beneath the surface. This is due in no small part to the impressive and risky performance of Mortenson. Playing a Russian immigrant, he adopts a believable accent and an impressive array of Russian phrases and, with unflinching bravery, plays the character the audience hates to love. Anna is fairly uninteresting as the innocent urbanite, but Cronenberg knows what the audience wants, and the movie follows Mortenson through his moral crisis with subtle believability.
The violence is ultimately the star of the show. Cronenberg knows that the genre naturally requires requisite scenes of violence, but he has a vastly different conception of violence than the street shootouts that audiences have grown accustomed to. He has a talent to bring his violence to the real world, showing just how brutal the seemingly attractive criminal life is in reality. If you have the stomach for a fully nude knife fight in a steam bath, then I highly recommend this movie. It is a meditation on life and death, shown in a world that is as foreign as it comes. Like in A History of Violence Cronenberg once again utilizes familiar genre conceptions to make a movie that rattles audience expectations. The movie is tough but enjoyable - one where you are never sure what will come next.
