Eastern Promises

[Pozer]

think it's because i read something about mac in w/o's post, but did mean sal.  and while were at it silias too.  i felt a bit unfulfilled in the end, but then realized long after that it was in fact still there under my skin.   

[Gamblour.]

Didn't really care for this at all, except the scene in the steam room is one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen. I felt like my life was in danger.

[MacGuffin]

Gentleman's relish
Syphilitic parasites, eroticised car crashes and invading maggots - David Cronenberg's films drip with sex and violence. His latest, Eastern Promises, is no exception. Simon Hattenstone encounters the man even Martin Scorsese said he was too terrified to meet
Source: The Guardian

David Cronenberg doesn't get it. Why do people think he's weird? OK, so he makes films in which men mutate into diseased flies, women give birth to giant slugs, car crashes are eroticised, lovers penetrate vulva-like scars, game-players plug umbilical cords into their spines and syphilitic parasites go on the rampage. What's so damned unusual about that?

He seems shocked, outraged even, that viewers might be shocked and outraged by his films. After all, he says, they simply deal with the matter of life.

We meet in France, a country that celebrates him as one of the great contemporary auteurs. He sits straight in his chair, talks with professorial restraint and drills you with pure blue eyes. "I can't imagine how people are not amazed by life and what it is and how it works," he says. "How does an insect work? Does it have a brain, and how can it be so small, and how can they do such amazing things? I find that fascinating. It always amuses me that people fantasise about alien life forms on other planets, and meanwhile we have the most alien life forms you could imagine right on this planet. Weird people are people who don't want to explore and dissect and hypothesise 'what-if' questions."

His vision is singular. What lies behind it? Yes, many of us are interested in the detritus of the human body, the physicality of existence, the possibilities of evolution, but few of us have explored them so explicitly. What inspired his love of blood and gore? He drills me with the eyes again. "On the contrary, I wonder why you wouldn't be interested in that, and you're suggesting, in a way, that most people wouldn't."

Cronenberg has been making his existential horror movies for close on 40 years now. He is the master of his own genre - sometimes referred to as body horror or venereal horror. In his first films, Stereo (1969) and Crimes Of The Future (1970), he explores themes that are to emerge again and again through his body of work - diseased bodies, dissection, telepathy, sexual obsession, the growth of extracurricular organs and consciousness. Cronenberg has often been accused of misanthropy and, in particular, misogyny, but the director insists that he is merely shining a light on the human condition.

He has always been fascinated by, and fearful of, human beings invaded by foreign bodies. Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977) are cautionary tales in which scientists modify the human body to disastrous effect. When in Rabid Marilyn Chambers grows a blood-sucking penis in her armpit, you just know things aren't going to turn out well. In later films, Cronenberg manages to combine schlocky splatterfest with downbeat naturalism, and has successfully adapted novels that were previously thought unfilmable - notably JG Ballard's Crash and William Burroughs' Naked Lunch. Burroughs' acid-trip masterpiece was perfect Cronenberg territory - as with so many of his films, you can't tell whether the action is happening in the "real" world or simply in the protagonist's head. Cronenberg the philosopher forces us to ask if there is a difference between the two.

His new film, Eastern Promises, about Russian gangsters in London, starts with three of the bloodiest scenes you are likely to see in the movies - a throat-cutting, the shooting of a heavily pregnant woman and a birth. The film is beautifully shot, pacy and overripe with carnage. In his previous movie, the impressive A History Of Violence, a man's face is blown away and Cronenberg's camera focuses unapologetically (some might say gleefully) on the end result - a nauseating stew of tissue, blood and bone. So often he weaves together a rich, complex story, only to resolve it with a bloodbath - it reminds me of those Monty Python sketches that concluded with 16-tonne weights crashing down because they couldn't think of a proper ending. In both films, the protagonist, wonderfully played by Viggo Mortensen, is not who or what he appears to be. Whereas in earlier films, human beings were invaded by alien bodies, in these two films whole communities (quiet towns, urbane cities) are invaded by an alien body.

Cronenberg, now 64, has lived in the quiet, urbane city of Toronto all his life. He was born to secular Jewish parents - dad a writer, mum a musician. His upbringing was liberal and intellectually stimulating - he says he was never bored, despite growing up in the bland, closeted early 50s.

I tell him that when I told friends I was going to see him, most wanted to know the same thing: what was he like as a child? "Pretty ordinary, really," he says, volunteering no details and strangling the topic at birth. On other occasions, he has suggested he wasn't quite such a regular kid. "When I grew up," he said in the book Cronenberg On Cronenberg, "most other kids weren't into watching praying mantises eating grasshoppers."

By the age of 12, he was writing fiction. Not quite horror stories, but sufficiently sinister to surprise his classmates. "I wrote a story where Death was one of the characters. A girl said that sounds as if it was written by a 90-year-old man. I took that as a kind of compliment, you know, because it was very dark and very serious."

Cronenberg's parents were atheists who encouraged him to experiment spiritually, convinced that sooner or later he'd find his own path to godlessness. And he did. This lack of belief, which became a belief system in itself, informs so much of his work: the primacy of the body, the finality of death, the lack of consolation. "It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing," he says, "a wish-fulfilment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously."

Cronenberg became more and more interested in science. At the university of Toronto, he began studying organic chemistry before swapping to literature. He dreamed of being another Isaac Asimov - a research scientist who could also turn his hand to fiction. "It didn't take me long to realise I didn't have the patience or temperament to do years of research. I'd rather just invent it."

So he did. "When I made Rabid, I invented stem cell research, basically. I posited the possibility of a neutral kind of tissue that would read its context if it were applied to someone as a transplant." So, if he had patented his ideas rather than simply turned them into movies... He finishes my sentence for me. "I could have been truly wealthy. People like to think of [his 1983 film] Videodrome as an anticipation of the internet." Cronenberg has never been backward in coming forward. Part of him still wants to be feted as a novelist. He says that screenplays are just technical accomplishments, and lack the beauty and depth of great fiction. He quotes Ingmar Bergman as another film-maker who felt film was second division. Ironically, it was Bergman, alongside Fellini and Kurosawa, who finally convinced Cronenberg that movies could be art. "They are still my touchstones."

As a film-maker, Cronenberg has often been bracketed with David Lynch - same first name, similar peak of white hair, and a not dissimilar strain of cinematic madness. When I mention this to Cronenberg, he seems to take umbrage. It's not that he dislikes Lynch's work (he's a fan, especially of Eraserhead), just that he thinks they are almost opposites. "Yeahhhhh," he says, meaning no. "He's got a very Jimmy Stewart aspect to him, which I definitely don't have. He likes the dreamlike surreal thing. I like to have the appearance of a rigorous kind of logic - a rationality, and from that I subvert it."

Many of his films originate with the what-if premise. "I think I'm just plugging into the zeitgeist and playing with that and examining it, because that's how I explore things. My movies are really me talking to myself about things, and saying, well, what about video games - for example, in Existenz: wouldn't a gamer want to plug directly into his nervous system? Well, let's just imagine he could. And then, when gamers see it, they say, 'Absolutely, I would do that.' "

You do love exploring your orifices, don't you? "Well, maybe not as much as Marilyn Chambers," he says, referring to the porn star he cast in Rabid. His face is expressionless, his voice a languid monotone. I'm not sure whether he's smiling inside. Or smirking. Or frowning. It's almost impossible to read him. He's extremely gentle, but cold gentle. At times, I sense a twinkle in the eye, but I'm not sure it's a benign twinkle. He admits he is taken with orifices. "Yeah, well, that's me. It's a creative thing. I'm thinking Darwin, evolution, and seeing the incredible life forms, and thinking humans could have developed in very different ways and still have been humans. And let me take on the role of the evolutionary force and see what we could be. In fact, a lot of those movies you're talking about are about evolution. It's really about how we have seized control over our own evolution." He points to his ears. "Look, I'm wearing hearing aids now. My eyes are lasered. I used to wear glasses for distance, I don't have to now - we are derailing evolution."

The image that stays with me from 1999's Existenz is the bioport, the spinal orifice, that Cronenberg creates for the game-player - in a moment of libidinous madness, Jude Law penetrates Jennifer Jason Leigh's bioport with his tongue rather than the game. It's disturbing in the way only Cronenberg can be - a nauseating scar and erotic accessory at the same time. I tell him it doesn't seem right - I watch it and find it a turn-on. "Well, of course. An orifice is an orifice. The sexual aspects of it are pretty obvious and the psychology of orifices does involve sexuality of every kind. Every orifice has come to have its sexual use, including ears, noses and everything else. So why would this new orifice not have its sexual aspect? Of course it does. So, to me, I'm just revealing things that are there to be revealed."

That's the role of the artist, he says - to lift a veil, to force us to look at things that are hidden or repressed; things we don't want to look at, or think we don't want to look at.

The film critic Alexander Walker famously condemned Crash, about a group of people turned on by car crashes, as being "beyond depravity". What did Walker mean by that? "I have no idea what he meant by that." He starts clinically to deconstruct Walker's comments. "I know what the words mean. Does he mean the people in the movie are operating beyond the bounds of depravity - in other words, they're extremely depraved? Did he mean I, as a film-maker, was operating beyond the bounds of depravity? You know, he [Walker] did get hit by a car at one point and he sent a message through someone who was interviewing me to say that he found that it was not at all erotic. He wanted me to know getting hit by a car was not an erotic experience. I said to the guy interviewing me, tell him to wait, he'll gradually realise, it'll grow on him." He almost smiles, and says he wears "beyond depravity" as a badge of honour. "I was pretty proud of that, and quoted it many, many times."

Crash, released in 1996, is the most obvious example of how his movies force us to examine, as voyeurs, unpalatable desires. "Can I ask something I've wanted to ask since seeing Crash?" I say. He nods. "It appalled me but it kind of excited me in a weird way, too, and I was driving away from the cinema in a medium-sized Volvo, and I saw a Mini and I..."

"You had the urge..."

"Yep."

"Of course you did."

"Is that wrong?"

"No, no, it is so right. Well, what would have been wrong is if you had actually done it."

For a moment I feel as if I'm with a degenerate version of Dr Frasier Crane. "I was just behind, and I wanted to give it a tap-tap-tap," I say. "And I'm not a violent man, Dr Cronenberg."

"Yes, yes, so you say."

Cronenberg has always loved his cars, and for many years he raced them. He once crashed a Ferrari into a concrete wall and escaped unhurt. Apart from that, he appears to have lived a sedate life in Toronto. He has been married to his second wife, Caroline Zeifman (who worked as a production assistant on Rabid), for close on 30 years, and has three children in their 20s and 30s. Did they never watch his movies and say to him, "Blimey, Dad, you're such a perv!"

"Well, first of all, they haven't seen all of my movies," he says, po-faced. "But, no, I have a great relationship with them."

Has he always been obsessed with the relationship between sex and violence? Now he does take umbrage. "I know it's convenient to portray me as obsessed, but I'm not obsessed. I'm not an obsessive person at all. Obsession is a different thing."

OK, you're certainly very interested in sex and violence? "I wish I could be the first to say I made that connection but, you know, 5,000 years ago... I think there's violence involved in all sexuality and I think there is sexuality involved in all violence."

He refers me to the throat-cutting scene in Eastern Promises and explains how its inspiration is rooted in the modern fundamentalist world. "You watch a beheading by several priests all shouting and it looks absolutely like a gay gang rite. I think there's a huge homoerotic element - not necessarily homoerotic, when you're stoning a woman to death, there's a heteroerotic element, too - in that that's very disturbing. I think those people doing that would be shocked that you would suggest such a thing, but to me it's obvious. And I think it needs to be addressed. I don't think you can cover it up with religiosity and self-righteousness because you're actually beheading this person whose arms are tied behind his back and he's on the floor, and you're sitting on top of him. What is that? It's very perversely sexual. I think it's evident."

Cronenberg has never belonged to the elliptical school of film-makers. If there's an eye-gouging in the script, we can be sure we'll get to see it. His movies would sometimes benefit from suggesting more and showing less. You seem to do violence with such relish, I say. "That might be you projecting on to me. No, no, there's a cinematic joy because I'm creating something that looks real and it's horrific." Hmm. "In A History Of Violence," he continues, "I'm saying you shoot somebody in the head, you've done a lot of damage to a human being by doing that, and I don't want to let the audience off the hook. If they enjoy that, then fine, that's good, then they should know that about themselves; that they might not mind shooting a bad guy in the head, even if it was pretty horrific and disgusting and repulsive and hard to look at. When I showed that movie in the States, some journalists said, 'No, that's great, I love that, good for him.'" Funny, everybody gets off on Cronenberg's sex and violence except him.

There is an old story that, after watching Cronenberg's early films, Martin Scorsese said he was terrified of meeting him. I ask if it's true. "He did say that, yes, because he saw Shivers and Rabid. When he told me that, I said, Marty, the guy who made Taxi Driver is afraid to meet me! I'm afraid to meet you!" Did he like the idea that Scorsese was scared of him? "I did, but it's kind of weird because I expect straight citizens to confuse the artist with his art - they think if you make violent films you must be a violent person. What bothered me was that another film-maker could make the same mistake."

The night before we met I had watched 1986's The Fly. As litres of bilious green gunk poured out of Jeff Goldblum's exploding fly-man, I thought I was going to vomit. Has he ever been sick watching his own films? "No, but I can certainly understand why others have. The problem for me is I can't really watch my movies as movies. It takes so much effort to get those effects to work, you're doing so many shots, that it's impossible for me to watch my movies the way you would."

Cronenberg, who has made guest appearances in his own films, often gets wonderful performances from his actors. Goldblum as the naive, love-struck scientist in The Fly; Jeremy Irons as twin gynaecologists in Dead Ringers; Jennifer Jason Leigh as the computer game inventor in Existenz; Holly Hunter and James Spader as the automobile fetishists in Crash; and, perhaps most memorably, Viggo Mortensen in his two most recent films, A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises.

Why do such fine actors want to work with him? "I guess the reputation finally gets around." What reputation? "I think it's a reputation for observing actors. You'd be surprised by how many directors don't really watch their actors and pay attention to them. They cast them, let them do their thing, then worry about the lighting and the angle. Actors want to be observed; they don't want to act in a vacuum. There is a great potential for humiliation of all kinds on a film, with crews as well, and it's pretty Canadian and mushy of me, but I think that affection, love and respect really work much better." So you're a softy at heart? "Totally. I'm a complete softy."

Mortensen's characters in A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises couldn't be more different, but they are both classic Cronenberg creations - men with secrets leading double lives, and probably no longer aware that they are doing so. JG Ballard has said, "All of Cronenberg's films... are concerned with two questions: who are we, and what is the real nature of consciousness?"

Critics have suggested his last two films - thrillers rather than horror movies - show a move towards the mainstream. Cronenberg says he's heard it all before and refuses to see a pattern in his evolution as a film-maker. "The Dead Zone was based on a bestselling novel, so people were saying, 'Ah, now Cronenberg has left the horror stuff' and then the next movie I did was The Fly, which is extremely violent and gory because it was a sci-fi horror film."

He has a point. The plots in A History Of Violence and Eastern Promises might be more accessible than those in earlier films, but the lives portrayed are as bleak and twisted as ever. Is he a pessimist? He looks startled, almost hurt, that anyone could suggest such a thing. No, he says, no, no, no, no. Just because he shows the world in all its visceral horror doesn't mean that he's devoid of hope. Far from it - not in a world that's brimming with syphilitic maggots and erotic barbarism. "I don't think you could make movies out of pessimism. It's so hard to make a movie, you have to have real energy. If you are a really truly enthusiastic depressive, you cannot make art. You really can't. It's too hard. And just the act of making a movie is an optimistic thing. You are assuming that there is a future, that people will be interested, that people will come to your movie. That requires optimism."

[The Sheriff]

he should research hookers more. hes interested in the brain of an insect, psychology of a drug addict, of a schizo, of MACHINES...

but doesnt know shit about women

[Stefen]

Viggo is awesome and I have a man crush on him. I'm no homo, but theres something about him that makes me want to jerk him off (in a straight way)

It's unfortunate that this movie was so disappointing because Viggo's performance was really awesome. I hope him and Cronenberg make alot more movies together because they are a perfect pair.

Cronenbergs gore was always something I thought was unique, but it doesn't have that uniqueness here. It's just gory.

And when did Naomi Watts get so ugly? She could use some braces or some invisalign.

6.9/10.

[ElPandaRoyal]

I kust saw it and my first impression is a "damn good yet not great flick". As posted before, it has some amazing and strong performances, the pace is quite good and nobody shoots violence the way Cronenbeg does. It's scary and makes you cringe and that's how it should be donem with all the blood and scars right there. Yet, something about the storytelling didn't feel quite right to me. Maybe the ending didn't please me that much, and I'd loved it to go about 2 hours and some more development of some of the characters. Yet, as a character study, it works fine. And Cronenberg does his best to always be fascinating. I mean, even the food here helps tell the damn story.

Top 10 of the year? I'll have to think about it and give it more time to grow on me. Even re-watch it maybe...

[Redlum]

This film, like A History of Violence hinges on Viggo's performance, despite it being Naomi Watt's character that pursues the films central mystery. What surprised me most about this film was that amidst the mob violence there was a pretty great romantic sub plot, trying to get out. I suppose it's pretty easy to warm to this notion as relief from the grimness of the violence and sex trafficking but I think it played really well.

Viggo is an understated hero in this film. You root for him in the same way you root for Cary Grant's Devlin in Notorious. The film has that same level of danger sinisterness as Notorious but unlike Devlin, Viggo's character can't be the knight in shining armour. The last shot of the film is something that has stuck with me and is certainly one of the most perfect endings to a film I've seen lately.

I mean, even the food here helps tell the damn story.

Yes! The restaurant scenes were fascinating. Last time I was that interested in the food in a film was Goodfellas. What is it with the mafia and their food?

[ElPandaRoyal]

What is it with the mafia and their food?

They don't want to get wacked on an empty stomach.

[Stefen]

Heart disease is the second biggest cause of death for mafiosos.

[MacGuffin]

David Cronenberg 'Promises' There's No Master Plan
Source: MTV

Not many directors catch their second wind at age 62; not many directors could yield such diverse flicks as "A History of Violence," "The Fly" and "Naked Lunch." Then again, not many directors are on the same level as David Cronenberg.

With the awards-season momentum of "Eastern Promises" continuing to grow as it debuts on DVD, we caught up with the iconic auteur to get his thoughts on neck-slicing, the perceived stages of his back catalog, and whether he and James Woods predicted the Internet way back in 1983.

MTV: David, some people are calling "Promises" an unofficial sequel to "A History of Violence." Was that your intention?

DAVID CRONENBERG: Well, I can see why they would. It's actually sort of like a mirror image in a way, because of the nature of concealed identity. In one case, you have a bad man who appears to be good; in the other one, you have a good man who appears to be bad.

MTV: Would you like to see them linked together in the years to come?

DC: I can see how they might be fun on a double-bill together. But really, it's just by accident. There were several other projects that came my way, and I almost did one or two of those, but that didn't happen. It wasn't planned, let's put it that way.

MTV: Your fans have elaborate theories on how "Shivers" and "Rabid" came from a period when you were obsessed with scientists modifying human bodies, "Scanners" and "Videodrome" are linked in their personal chaos plotlines, and "The Fly" and "Dead Ringers" are about scientists instead using themselves as guinea pigs. Do you go through periods, like a painter?

DC: I don't, no. It's interesting: It's a different part of your brain that you use when you're being analytical about, let's say, any artistic work. I can be articulate about that. At one point I thought I might have a career as an academic, teaching at a university. So I can do that; I can be a critic. I can be an analyst of my own work. But when I'm doing that, I am using a different part of my brain than when I direct. I sometimes have to remind critics, and film journalists, not to confuse their process with mine. In other words, what they're saying is not necessarily wrong, but it's not what I use to make a movie.

MTV: So, you shut off that part of your brain?

DC: It doesn't really help me in trying to make "Eastern Promises," to look at how it might connect to the characters in "A History of Violence." That doesn't help me at all. It wouldn't help Viggo [Mortensen], nobody. Creatively, it's not fruitful. After the fact, analytically, it can be very interesting to take that approach. But I take it as a compliment, because it means that the films are interesting enough and complex enough and have enough texture that they can support that kind of analysis.

MTV: In your early movies, you depended more on gore. Do those old muscles allow you to be more accurate than most directors when you need to, say, portray a man in "Promises" getting his throat slit?

DC: Well, you'll have to tell me about "Sweeney Todd." I haven't seen it yet, but I have a feeling there are a few throat cuttings in that one, too. All of my experience making movies has helped me make other movies.

MTV: But your violence still feels more real than virtually anyone else's.

DC: You can see somebody getting their throat cut on your computer, any time of the day or night that you want; that's a new thing. It's true that most people maybe won't look for that - but it's there, it's accessible. And that's unique now. That has never happened before, in the history of the world ... I think we're in different times now. Everything's shifted slightly.

MTV: In that whole voyeuristic, snuff-film regard, did "Videodrome" predict where we are now with the Internet?

DC: People have been saying that movie was prophetic; they've been saying it for years. It seems that that continues. I think people see the "Videodrome" interactivity as being in anticipation of the Internet, and I suppose, in a metaphorical way, it really was.

[Alexandro]

i saw this yesterday and it was pretty much great: i laughed, i was shocked, tha fight scene is easily one of the best cinema moments of 2007. Naomi looks great in those jeans and boots. Viggo is fucking amazing, every single moment and line is delivered with mastery. Cassel is one of those actors who sholuld be winning awards every time too.

My only beef was the vo narration. What the fuck was that? Lame, lame, lame. Didn't anyone realized hat it was unintentionally funny and overtly sentimental? Why, if they took so much trouble so everyone sounded right with their accents and lots of the dialogues is atually spoken in russian did they do that with that particular voice??? It nearly ruined everything.

[Gold Trumpet]

This had to be one of the blandest movies of the year. A large cliche about old gangster movies is that the protaganist would be a member of the mob who had a heart but was stuck in a bad predicament he couldn't escape. Is Eastern Promises different at all? The only difference is in the cultural footnotes about Russian mafia, but so what? They take up so little of the movie and the violence withstanding, this movie is nothing more than bad melodrama. There is even a subplot involving an orphaned child. C'mon. I think if this film didn't have the actors and director it did and had none of the style nods it would have been seen as a bad film and disregarded. I wanted to disregard the film but I had say something because of all the praise.

[Alexandro]

i didnt saw anything new under the sun either, but the execution (for the most part) is great. viggo's performance alone is worth the viewing. as i said, the only real problem for me was the voice over.

[Gold Trumpet]

viggo's performance alone is worth the viewing.

His performance isn't anything. His character is quiet and meticulous and is able to have the same the look and manner through out the whole film. Because he doesn't come off as cocky and overblown as Vincent Cassel's character he is able to carry himself the same way when he starts to change and show his sensibilities. I think Mortenson and the writers focused on his physical look before trying to dig at his personality. Vincent Cassel's character is the one with the most variety but it's also underwritten.

[w/o horse]

What GT said about the film being a culturally heightened extension of the traditional good guy caught in a bad situation story never even occurred to me, which is funny because it's the plot you know.  And I never even thought about how ham fisted the third act twist was, and I never even considered that Mortenson's own rape might be rationally excused (or that any rape could).  Because it's been a long time since I considered the plot elements of any of Cronenberg's films.  Maybe I tried to back at Shivers or The Brood but there wasn't much point.  Which is my point.  Because Eastern Promises obviously isn't a morality play, and it obviously doesn't have a moral polarity.