Eastern Promises (2007)

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:44 pm

Stephan Dupuis, who did the tattoos on Viggo and other makeup for Eastern Promises is getting a special award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television for outstanding achievement in make-up design and special award for contributions to the film industry.

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Sat Mar 01, 2008 1:54 am

Oh well I could never work on Viggo like that I would be just giggling all over myself and he would just think me a complete bimbo and airhead. tongue

Which is what I am I think. geek

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Despair has no wings... ~ Paul Eluard

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Sat Mar 01, 2008 5:55 pm

A really good audio interview with Vincent Cassel can be heard here:

http://www.filmdetail.com/archives/2008/02/27/interview-vincent-cassel-on-eastern-promises

Click twice.

Mr. Cassel is interesting to listen to not only for what he has to say about the movie and all the roles but to listen to his accent. So much has been made of Viggo's Russian accent but Mr. Cassel had to convert his obvious French accent to sound Russian. I feel he was completely overlooked in this movie. His portrayal of the character of Kiril was about as challenging as that of Nikolai's. How nice that Cassel seemed to be honoured to work with the likes of his colleagues.
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Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
- Mark Twain

This is me for forever / One of the lost ones / The one without a name / Without an honest heart as compass

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:42 am

The real promise of Eastern Promises?

Here's an interesting review of EP that gives a lot of food for thought. At least for me it does. Interesting how it addresses the spiritual content, the violent content, the sexual content and even the positive elements.

Two things stuck with me one being twice it is mentioned that Nikolai has forced sex with a prostitute and then they call her a woman. Forced? It has always made me curious why the forced sex had to be depicted in the manner in which it was depicted. What was the purpose of this entire scene and specificially the way it was portrayed? This has always been a niggling thought for me from the moment I first saw it.

The other thing that stuck with me was so much is centred around the character of Nikolai that the other characters never seem to materialize in the story in the way they should have. As if they were just backdrop... Anna's story could have been more developed as much as Kirill's. It was as if they briefly touched on their lives but decidedly Nikolai was more important. And what of the young girl Tatiana? I don't know but there is rarely a time when I would think a sequel would be in order after such a great movie as this one with so much potential perhaps in this case a prequel might be best? I can't decide which would be best.

I liked this movie an awful lot no matter what and not just because of Viggo's performance and work but there are huge holes in it. It is as if somewhere along the way something got lost that we were given to expect in the first half hour.

In any case, this review really got me to thinking. No doubt my thoughts won't resonate with anyone else but I just have to voice them as honestly as I feel. This movie would have been so much less without the addition of the relevance of tattoos but still it was as if it changed gears somewhere along the way. I've seen the movie twice now maybe I need to see it again. Suspect

Here's the link to the review: http://www.pluggedinonline.com/movies/movies/a0003405.cfm
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Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
- Mark Twain

This is me for forever / One of the lost ones / The one without a name / Without an honest heart as compass

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Sun Mar 09, 2008 8:09 pm

Recently posted on Perceval Press

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Sun Mar 09, 2008 9:10 pm

It seems I have to wait till a day in April to get the dvd. I don't remember the date. I just have to wait!!!
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You got it into yourself to be good at anything, you aim at. The fact is, that you must never give up. Accept what you are and be proud of it, be grateful for it. But never let it go to the head, always keep the feet on the ground. (From Bear Hearts wisdom). Add: Could have been Viggos, too!!!

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:04 pm

Now I've seen it and it's a very tough movie! I held my right arm in front of my eyes several times during the movie.
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You got it into yourself to be good at anything, you aim at. The fact is, that you must never give up. Accept what you are and be proud of it, be grateful for it. But never let it go to the head, always keep the feet on the ground. (From Bear Hearts wisdom). Add: Could have been Viggos, too!!!

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Fri May 09, 2008 5:40 pm

From www.theadvocate.com:
Viggo's Promise

Paul Pratt sits down with Viggo Mortensen and Eastern Promises director David Cronenberg to discuss the film's homosexual side and Viggo's soon-to-be notorious six-minute nude scene.

By Paul Pratt

An Advocate.com exclusive posted September 24, 2007

If David Cronenberg ever wondered whether Viggo Mortensen could outlive his role as a would-be king of Middle-earth, his fears should at last be put to rest. His latest film's steam bath scene has Mortensen as a sinewy, heavily tattooed Russian hit man dispatching two hired assassins in hand-to-hand combat—entirely naked. Aragorn who?

Eastern Promises follows Anna, a midwife played by Academy Award nominee Naomi Watts, as she seeks the family of an infant whose underage mother died during childbirth. Soon she's on a collision course with Nikolai (Mortensen), chauffeur and hired hand for the head of London's Russian crime syndicate. Full of violence, sex, and an unquestionably homoerotic relationship between Nikolai and the mafia leader's son, Cronenberg and his blue-eyed leading man keep audiences guessing.

Viggo Mortensen and the author

Viggo, you are so buff in the movie. Have you lost weight since filming wrapped?

David Cronenberg: I actually enhance the way he looks through camera work. He's actually really scrawny and ugly.

Viggo Mortensen: And he had to digitally add genitals. I neglected to tell him I have none. He actually had to add them, not just enhance them, because I had none whatsoever.

DC [Laughing]: That was certainly a conversation killer right there.

Even when the film ends, so much about Nikolai is still a mystery. It looks like he's at least a double—and possibly even a triple—agent, but we're not sure. How well did you really know this character?

DC: Actually, we don't. [Grins.] Or we do, but we're not telling.

VM: I know, but I'm not telling. Besides, how much do we ever really know about the people around us? How well do we really know our friends, parents, lovers, partners, coworkers, neighbors, spouses? Everyone keeps some secrets. This man is no different. He has had many different experiences in his life and draws on each of those as is necessary.

Seeing Nikolai—this very hardened, reserved character—attacked when he was at his least protected in the steam bath is like the male version of the shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho.

DC: Yes, that had occurred to me but only recently. About three days ago it occurred to me that you're never more vulnerable than when you're naked, wet, and hot. All your blood is just right there to be sprung out.

Viggo, you're completely naked for that entire scene—and the camera never cuts away once. How long did that take to film?

VM: It took two days. Just two days, which was great. We were in three rooms, and one of the rooms we were in twice, just flying all around. It's really the way it should have been, and it turned out incredible.

DC: It's never mentioned in the script whether he has a towel, what happens to the towel, whether he's naked or not naked. All these things had to be decided by me. Once we had the set, we had to consider whether the actors could handle the stunts. Of course, for Viggo that would have been impossible anyway. There's just no way you can double somebody who's naked. The bodies are just never the same. Once I discussed the plotting Viggo said to me, “I'm obviously going to have to do this naked.” And that's all the discussion there was about that.

Homophobia is a driving force in this film. Kirill, the mob boss's son, orders his friend Soyka killed. Later it's revealed his motive is a rumor Soyka's gay. In his interactions with Nikolai, the way he looks at him and other nuances, the film suggests Kirill might very well be homosexual.

DC: One of the problems with multiculturalism—which is what London prides itself on, as does my hometown of Toronto—is it's in opposition to the melting-pot idea of America. Everybody who comes here becomes "American" and takes on American values and gives up what they brought to the country. One of the downsides, I suppose, of multiculturalism is all the old hostilities and prejudices and stereotypes come with these people and their cultures. Certainly that whole Russian mafia and underground is very macho and homophobic. There's not much room to move with that. It's been ingrained over centuries and centuries. It's an ancient tribal thing where one might say "Oh, those Georgians are all pederasts" or "Those Albanians, they're all homosexuals." It's all a way of stigmatizing, but what it's really encoding are these ancient, ancient rivalries. We don't know that the Soyka character really was a homosexual. It's just a way of stigmatizing him and, in a way, justifying murdering him. We later find out the real reason maybe he was murdered is because he was going to the police. He was betraying everybody. Was that even true? We're not sure. It's just a convenient excuse.

VM: It's interesting having Kirill call him a "pederast" to begin with, and equating pederasty with homosexuality, especially from someone who may be himself a homosexual...

DC: Yes, Kirill could be and is not able to accept it. It's a form of Kirill's projecting [his own feelings on Soyka].

VM: My character uses [his relationship with Kirill] to get what he wants. It's practical. It's hard to know. Is there something there? You never really know, and that's OK too. It's part of what I was saying about life and people. How much do you know? How sure can you be? It's useful—and yet there seems to be a genuine and unusual...unusually played-out...tenderness between these two characters. There are unexpected moments of kindness, tenderness, caring, intimacy in the middle of all this bravado.

Paul E. Pratt is a San Francisco–based freelance entertainment journalist. Visit www.PaulEPratt.com . Film still courtesy of Focus Features.
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Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Fri May 09, 2008 9:06 pm

Thanks for bringing this one to light Jennifer -- nice work during these quiet Viggo times. I love it when DC and VM play off each other. Together they are a scream!

Scrawny and ugly What a Face

_________________
Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
- Mark Twain

This is me for forever / One of the lost ones / The one without a name / Without an honest heart as compass

Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:03 pm

From www.yomiuri.co.jp

Bodies of evidence

Tom Baker / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Eastern Promises
4 stars out of five
Dir: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassell

For its first few minutes, Eastern Promises could be any old gangster movie by any old director. It begins at night in a rundown urban ethnic neighborhood where neon lights are blurred by rain and where a cocky gangster relaxes in a barber's chair, waiting for a shave.
If you know anything about gangsters, you don't need to be told just how close that shave is going to be. But that is almost the only predictable moment in this movie, in which director David Cronenberg takes familiar elements and makes them new and gripping.

Getting one's throat slashed in a barber shop is just one of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, as Cronenberg is well qualified to show. He is best known for a string of horror films, including Videodrome (1983), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988) and eXistenZ (1999), in which flesh is not merely the recipient of injury, but also a simultaneously mesmerizing and revolting locus of mystery and power.

Cronenberg also has at least one fine gangster film already under his belt: A History of Violence (2005) in which Viggo Mortensen plays a former bad guy trying to go straight in Middle America. In Eastern Promises, Mortensen plays Nikolai, a middle-ranking Russian gangster trying to keep his London-based gang from self-destructing.

In an almost Shakespearean scenario, Nikolai is the conscientious servant of a foolish and spoiled prince (Kirill, played by Vincent Cassell) who constantly disappoints their strong but aging king (top gangster Semyon, Kirill's father, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl).
Complicating matters, Kirill is an unconvincingly closeted homosexual, but anyone who mentions this obvious fact risks death.
An unexpected external threat to the gang appears when midwife Anna (Naomi Watts) knocks on their door in search of the family of a fatherless infant whose nameless mother Anna has just seen die.
As the characters shrewdly or rashly pursue often hidden interests, the story becomes engrossing and suspenseful. Nothing supernatural happens, but touches of the old Cronenberg flesh horror linger, especially when two knife-wielding killers attack a naked man.
In a Chicago Tribune essay on male nudity in contemporary English-language cinema that ran in this paper on May 20, commentator Laura Hodes argued that "The naked female body is a source of sexual arousal" while "The penis is played for laughs."

But the nude scene in Eastern Promises is neither comic nor erotic. Instead, the nakedness of the man under attack--with his physical limits literally defined as the knives slash at him--shows him to be terrifyingly vulnerable.

Leave it to Cronenberg to make the familiar different, and to scare you while he's at it.

The movie, in English and some Russian, is currently playing. (Jun. 20, 2008)
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Subject: Re: Eastern Promises (2007) Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:26 am

Dvd review - Eastern Promises

June 28, 2008 Edition 1

Eastern Promises
Rating : ****

A maternity nurse, Anna (Naomi Watts) deals with a pregnant, physically traumatised and unconscious 14-year-old girl whose child has to be delivered during an emergency caesarian.

The baby survives, but the patient dies. Anna discovers a diary, written in Russian, hidden in the deceased girl's clothing, and asks her late father's brother, a Russian immigrant, to translate its contents.

She further investigates the girl's background, in order to return the baby to its ancestors, and, in so doing, meets a driver who's in the employ of the Russian underworld (Viggo Mortensen).

Strangely, he seems to have a moral core than one wouldn't expect to find in his milieu… By the time that Anna discovers that the young lass had been a sex slave "belonging" to the local Russian mafia, she already knows too much to extricate herself from a sordid and dangerous sub-culture.

Directed by David Cronenberg (he of Videodrome and Naked Lunch) it's a sad story of human trafficking that flourishes in the underbelly of supposedly cilivised cities, and unshrinkingly reveals a culture of inhuman gangster brutality.

Armin Meuller-Stahl is superb as the Russian "godfather", and French thesp Vincent Cassell, as his spoilt son Kiril, is both sinister and irritatingly indulged.

A riveting, intelligent, and mercilessly violent thriller-drama.
Extras: Two doccies; one, a "Making Of" in which the director and stars discuss the story and characters, and a second, in which we learn about tattoos in Russian underground culture, and how they serve as biographies, passports and signs of rank.
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