Straight to DVD

Eastern Promises

As I've mentioned before, David Cronenberg films are almost automatic Queue Blockers in my household, thanks largely to Dead Ringers. So despite great reviews and word of mouth, the A History of Violence DVD languished for months last year before I finally gave up and sent it back.

I didn't have much higher hopes of ever getting to see Eastern Promises, since it has its most promising features (great buzz, Viggo Mortensen) in common with A History of Violence. Yet it somehow managed to get into the DVD player pretty quickly. (The lack of the word violence in the title, or Whitney's foreknowledge that Viggo gets naked? She assures me it was the former.)

In Eastern Promises, Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife in a London hospital, is present in the birthing room of an anonymous underage Russian immigrant; the baby is born healthy, but the mother dies. Anna is left poring over the girl's diary in an attempt to find someone to take the baby. When Anna's Russian uncle (Jerzy Skolimowski) refuses to translate it, saying it's an invasion of the girl's privacy, she goes to a Russian restaurant mentioned in the diary, hoping someone there will be able to help. There she meets Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the owner, who professes no knowledge of the girl but agrees to translate the diary for her—if he can see the original rather than the photocopies Anna has brought.

But when Anna's uncle reads the diary after all, it becomes clear that Semyon has been less than honest: He and his son, Kirill (Vincent Cassel), are high-ranking members of the Russian mob in London, and both were very much involved in the dead mother's forced prostitution, pregnancy, and death. To cover their tracks, Semyon sends Kirill's driver, Nikolai (Mortensen), to retrieve the diary by whatever means necessary.

Yet Nikolai turns out to be something of an enigma, sometimes as threatening as one would expect a Russian-mob henchman to be, but at other times unexpectedly kind—suggesting to Anna that the baby should perhaps not be sent back to the desperately impoverished Russian city from which the dead mother came, for instance. Still, Nikolai's prospects within the criminal organization are on the rise, and soon Semyon has entrusted him with a lead role in putting the dead girl and her baby—and perhaps Anna and her family as well—behind them.

It shouldn't be surprising—even Dead Ringers was held together by Jeremy Irons's great double performance—that Eastern Promises is at heart an actor's showcase. And the four leads are all simply brilliant; it's hard to pick one out above the rest. If forced, I guess I'd have to go with Mueller-Stahl, who in one scene instantly turns a gentle, charming old man into one of the most quietly menacing presences I've seen onscreen. Or maybe Mortensen, since I forgot for most of the film that this was, you know, Aragorn. Or Cassel, for his taut, heartbreakingly pathetic portrayal during the film's climax. And then there's Watts, whose steady, firm acting carries the entire film ... oh, never mind.

There is violence in this movie, of course—this is still Cronenberg—and it's quite graphic when it occurs. But there's none of the sexual head-tripping that's often integral to the director's films, and none of the horror aspect found in many of them. In other words, Whitney loved Eastern Promises, too. (And she wants me to say again that it had nothing to do with Viggo getting naked.)

Maybe I should get A History of Violence back now?