Film Review: Eastern Promises

Eastern Promises

Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Stephen Knight.

Starring Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, and Armin Mueller-Stahl.

2007.

[NOTE: I don't want to give the feeling that I'm just burning old material without adding anything new (which I am), but I like the succinct minimalism of these notes. They say everything of real pertinence that I would have mentioned. I will just add one more thing: Eastern Promises functions as a piece of genre defamiliarization, as the gangster movie without a single gun. SPOILERS ahead]


Initial dissatisfaction of reveal that Viggo had been working undercover

but with ambiguous look on his face in the ending

a real companion piece with A History of Violence

the duality of man... both good and bad sides

who is he at the end?

but reversed from A History of Violence

Most Anticipated: The Road

How can you have more than one most anticipated? Shut up, that's how!

Four reasons why I'm looking forward to The Road.


1) Viggo Mortensen. Look at him there, in that picture, all bearded and badass. Viggo has quickly become one of my favourite actors, mostly (entirely?) thanks to his work with David Cronenberg (esp. A History of Violence). Viggo also has Good and Appaloosa coming out this year, which look good and interesting, respectively.

2) Cormac McCarthy. The man wrote the source novel to No Country for Old Men, which I loved, as well as the source novel to this. And ummmm All the Pretty Horses, too I guess.

3) John Hillcoat. The man directed The Proposition, which was all kinds of grimy and gritty and violent and dirty realistic down under western, which would seemingly make it for this project as it's set in...

4) The Post-Apocalypse. How I love post-apocalyptic worlds. Maybe because they so often involve zombies. Not that this involves zombies. None that I am aware of, at least. But I can love them separately. I'm not sure what love came first. It's a chicken and the egg thing.

J.G. Ballard Death Watch

As regular readers well know, I contemplated buying J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition back in April.

Now comes word that Ballard has written his last book: his autobiography Miracles of Life, published in this year of our Lord two thousand and eight. However, all of his work has been vaguely autobiographical. This is what makes him such a fascinating figure, for me at least. The idea that one could draw a line from Jamie Graham of the 1940s Japanese-occupied Shanghai of Empire of the Sun to the automotive paraphiliac James Ballard of the transgressive new wave sf Crash. Either that, or its all one big joke.

Miracles of Life is Ballard's last book because frankly, he is dying. Terminally. Of advanced prostate cancer.

I still hope to get my hands on Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition. And Crash. And The Drowned World. And Empire of the Sun. And High-Rise. And anything else, and there is plenty else.

The Atrocity Exhibition famously, or infamously, includes the short story "Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan." Reagan at the time of writing and publication in 1967-8 was, of course, still just Governor of California and a politician-to-watch. Here best to remember the man, a living memoriam, is an excerpt:

THE CONCEPTUAL ROLE OF REAGAN. Fragments of Reagan’s cinetized postures were used in the construction of model psychodramas in which the Reagan-figure played the role of husband, doctor, insurance salesman, marriage counselor, etc.

The failure of these roles to express any meaning reveals the nonfunctional character of Reagan. Reagan’s success therefore indicates society’s periodic need to re-conceptualize its political leaders. Reagan thus appears as a series of posture concepts, basic equations which reformulate the roles of aggression and anality. Reagan’s personality. The profound anality of the Presidential contender may be expected to dominate the United States in the coming years. By contrast the late JFK remained the prototype of the oral subject, usually conceived in pre-pubertal terms. In further studies sadistic psychopaths were given the task of devising sex fantasies involving Reagan. Results confirm the probability of Presidential figures being perceived primarily in genital terms; the face of LB Johnson is clearly genital in significant appearance--the nasal prepuce, scrotal jaw, etc. Faces were seen as either circumcised (JFK, Khrushchev) or uncircumcised (LBJ, Adenauer). In assembly-kit tests Reagan’s face was uniformly perceived as a penile erection. Patients were encouraged to devise the optimum sex-death of Ronald Reagan.

Twelve minutes to midnight.

Bonus Memoriam: A shot from the David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Crash. Here we see the vulva-like scar on the back thigh, an automobile accident-caused leg wound, of a character before the main character penetrates it sexually, liberating-ly so. These cars, this "perverse technology," this reshaping of the human body by modern technology," all brought to the forefront, the new flesh:


Bon appétit.

Inventory: DVDs by Director

Inventory: Where I look at the stuff I have.

DVDs by Director: Where I judge filmmakers by the part of their filmography I own.



David Cronenberg: The Brood, Eastern Promises, The Fly, A History of Violence, Scanners, Spider, Videodrome

Conclusion: The body is a very scary place.


Chan-wook Park: Lady Vengeance, Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Conclusion: Always choose revenge.


George A. Romero: Dawn of the Dead, Monkey Shines

Conclusion: Be wary of zombies and/or monkeys.


Martin Scorsese: The King of Comedy, Taxi Driver

Conclusion: Robert De Niro is a scary obsessive loner.