EASTERN PROMISES (Review)

EASTERN PROMISES
(Review)

I have two all-time favorite directors. One is David Lynch. The other is another namesake of mine, David Cronenberg.

My first exposure to Cronenberg’s virulent brand of cinema was in the now vanished (and still sorely missed) Magallanes Theater. The film was Scanners. Enraptured by visions of exploding heads, and aided by the magick of the Betamax, I subsequently sought out this man’s earlier work, and was further mesmerized by Rabid and The Brood.

Moving forward, his became a name I vigilantly kept an eye out for...

Cronenberg’s latest, Eastern Promises, sees him team up once again with his A History of Violence star, Viggo Mortensen.

It’s an excellent and controlled morality tale involving a young English midwife, Anna (Naomi Watts), who crosses paths with the Russian Mafia when she comes into possession of a diary belonging to an under-aged girl who died while giving birth to a baby.

Like A History of Violence before it, Eastern Promises observes the shuddering impact that occurs when the world of crime collides with ordinary, everyday life, and perhaps even more tragically, with the dream of an ordinary, everyday life.
Like Violence, it also boasts some very impressive performances.

Aside from Watts and Mortensen, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassel also grace the screen, as father and son, Semyon and Kirill. (A tattooed Mortensen plays Kirill’s driver, Nikolai.)
Considering the accents involved in this one, the performances here are arguably even better than those in Violence. One has to acknowledge the fascinating display of thespian prowess when an Australian plays an Englishwoman, and an American, a Frenchman, and a German, all play Russians, and you wouldn’t know it by listening to them.*

Granted, the plot isn’t terribly complicated, but what Steven Knight‘s script manages to do is to lay down some very interesting characters, with complexities that are skillfully tapped into by Cronenberg and his brilliant cast.
Cronenberg also brings in frequent collaborators Howard Shore on music, and cinematographer extraordinaire Peter Suschitzky, to make Eastern Promises an even more fulfilling viewing experience.

Yes, there are no Mugwumps or Brundleflies or video assassins here. Not any longer. Cronenberg has apparently left behind his days as the so-called King of Venereal Horror.

As evidenced by A History of Violence, and now, Eastern Promises, his characters no longer find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. These days, we’ll have to settle for extreme instead.

Despite the grounding in the more mundane aspects of existence though, current Cronenberg cinema continues to be riveting and absorbing, and still displays textured performances that draw the audience in, and seduce them to stay, despite instinctive feelings of revulsion towards the on-screen action.
The spell he weaves today is still as potent and all-encompassing as it was in 1977, when a porn star’s armpit became a vector for disease, or in 1979, when Samantha Eggar externalized her rage into murderous dwarves, or in 1981, when a man’s head exploded in full Technicolor glory, and a 13-year-old boy became a life-long devotee.
Yes, Cronenbergia may no longer be as bizarre as it once was, but it’s still a brilliant place to visit.

* Well, technically, Watts was born in England, then raised in Australia, thus, her Australian accent.
And perhaps ironically—given his role in Eastern Promises as a displaced Russian living in England—Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, in East Prussia, Germany, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945, and populated by Russian citizens once the original German residents had either evacuated or been expelled.
Tilsit is now Sovetsk, Russia.

Parting shot: Aside from the 3 Golden Globe nominations (Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama for Viggo Mortensen, and Best Score for Howard Shore), Eastern Promises has also been recognized by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, who gave a nod to Mortensen for Best Actor.
Check out the 2008 Golden Globe nominees I’m excited about in Afterthoughts (33) in the Archive.

(Eastern Promises OS courtesy of impawards.com.)

SHEITAN (January 2006)

SHEITAN

(January 2006)

As if to forewarn the audience of the wild ride that is about to begin, a DJ at the Styxx Club asks if I am ready.

Ignorant of all that is to come, I say, “Hell, yeah!”

Poor, stupid fool, me.

With Christmas Eve right around the corner, a group of clubbers finds trouble at the Styxx, where Bart (Olivier Bartelemy) gets a bottle broken on his head.

Leaving the club behind, they travel to the country home of Eve (Roxane Mesquida), where they meet backwoods yokel and housekeeper Joseph (Vincent Cassel, one of France’s busiest actors, whose face I became familiar with from films like Christophe Gans’ Le Pacte des Loups—Brotherhood of the Wolf—and Les Rivieres Pourpres—The Crimson Rivers).

It isn’t long before they meet some curiously inbred-looking villagers, and experience a number of unsettling situations.

What gradually becomes clear is that all is not right out here in the French countryside.

Now, if it’s one thing the French can do, it’s to serve up some pretty disturbing, effed-up horror movies. From Alexandre Aja’s Haute Tension to Fabrice Du Welz’s Calvaire, I have come to be very wary of France; if these films are anything to go by, France is one country I am never stepping foot in.*

Sheitan follows in that fine, anti-tourism vein.

Though it is a variation of the young pretty things-in-peril fright flick, Sheitan succeeds in making the idea of being stalked by some mad cannibalistic killer with a chainsaw seem like a Disney movie.

Recent Hollywood offerings like The Hitcher or House of Wax or the Texas Chainsaw movies?

Wussy.

And Sheitan isn’t in the Hostel or Saw mode, either; what some industry observers have come to term as “torture porn.”

Sheitan takes the horror beyond the visceral, getting underneath your skin without the fixation on the blood and gore.

Kim Chapiron (who also directed both Cassel and Bartelemy in his short film La Barbichette) sets up a situation that is truly disturbing, painting a world seething with insanity and chaos, a world where God is deaf and blind.

And although this is the general thematic attitude the average horror film cops anyway, there is actually a crucial dining table discussion in Sheitan which serves as a cornerstone of the film’s portrayal of an indifferent deity.

And can we really blame Him?

After all, we watch a group of youngsters (some of them espousing a deep faith in their chosen god) cheat and steal and have wanton sex. General horniness, in fact, seems to be the major motivational factor which drives them, which muddles their judgment, making them easier prey.

Two telling points towards the film’s end bolster the God-in-absentia idea: the direct plea which goes unanswered, and the end result of the perhaps one true selfless act in the entire movie. (And keep in mind, this is happening just as Christmas comes around, a temporal setting incidentally shared by Calvaire.)

If there is any suprahuman force active in Sheitan, it’s the one the film is named for. Note though that there is no actual physical presence of the demonic or the supernatural which appears onscreen, no rotating heads or pea soup vomit. (Unless you consider Cassel wearing a set of fake bad teeth—and other head gear—demonic.)

There are, however, motifs: from the Styxx Club, to a dog called “Cerberus,” to a tale told by Joseph, to a ghastly birth on Christmas.

(Also, please note Joseph’s wife’s name…)

Sheitan is a cinematic experience that is by turns absurd and unsettling, and is the sort of movie that stays with you in a way that the majority of Hollywood’s horror doesn’t.

There are some images that will sear themselves indelibly on your mind’s eye, so be warned.

(The family portrait at film’s end is one of the most disturbing images in the entire movie.)

So if your idea of horror is the watered-down Hollywood PG-13 variety, or the measured quiet creep of long-haired female contortionist ghosts, you’d best be advised to stay as far away from Sheitan as you can.

If you are, however, open to the experience of being unsettled by your horror, then Christmas dinner with Sheitan could be just the ticket.

(Sheitan French OS' courtesy of impawards.com.)

* And Belgium too, as Calvaire is a Belgian horror movie.

(Not France, yes, but it is right next to France, so… Let’s change that to “I am never stepping foot in France and its surrounding areas.”)

[Originally posted 021807]