You totally almost got me there. There were several points during Eastern Promises that I actually thought I was watching a good film. Like that naked fight scene in the steam room that catered to all my filthiest, sickening, buried, maenadic sado-masochistic tendencies, or when the camera lingered on Viggo Mortensen looking cynical and Slavic, or when you showed Vincent Cassel looking closeted-gay and vulnerable behind the alcohol-and-Oedipal-fuelled madness. Even Naomi Watts convinced me that she gave a shit over what was happening from time to time. I really liked her motorbike too. Good for you.
But it was really a bit of fluff, wasn't it? Besides the acting, the best thing I can say about it is that it took advantage of how crazy we all think the Russians are less pretentiously than Martin Amis's last novel. It wasn't pretentious at all, in fact; it was the most Hollywood thing you've ever done - Hollywood in the sense that we need to be swept up by our emotions (Russians are crazy! They can be crazy to nice people too! I could have ended up as a 14 year old prostitute! It's great when pretty people kiss! et cetera), to suspend our disbelief, so that we can be wafted up and over the massive, gaping plotholes.
And David Cronenberg, this is so disappointing for two reasons.
First of all, it's hard to suspend your disbelief when a heroin-addicted 14 year old Russian prostitute who doesn't speak English dictates her diary posthumously in English. And it's hard to suspend your disbelief when all the Russian characters carry out all of their key communication in English, and only switch into Russian for the 'atmospheric' bits we don't need to understand to follow the story, and which you've chosen not to subtitle.
David Cronenberg, have you seen a little movie called The Passion of the Christ? I haven't, because my filthiest, sickening, buried, maenadic sado-masochistic tendencies don't extend to watching snuff films about Jesus. But it did rather well at the box office - Wikipedia says it was the highest grossing R-rated film of all time - even though the whole thing was subtitled. Subtitles are allowed now, David Cronenberg. Why the fuck couldn't you use subtitles? Apparently all the actors could manage to pretend to talk Russian. Why not make them do that, and let us at home suspend our disbelief so that we could ignore all the plotholes better?
Is it because the film played so viciously on stereotypes of Russians that you couldn't get enough Russians involved in its production to pull that one off? Tell me, David Cronenberg. Because you need a fucking excuse.
The other reason that I'm disappointed, David Cronenberg, is because while I've always been a distant fan of your visual style in a revolted sort of way, I have to say I really fucking loved A History of Violence. I thought you'd done something, if not revolutionary, at least really fucking awesome in terms of using your sick visual style in exploring the violent undertones of men and women in a way that was also Hollywood-y, emotionally cathartic, and revelatory of Viggo Mortensen's bum. But Eastern Promises seemed to indicate that was a bit of a one-off. I won't give away the plot twist, since you've asked people not to, but as far as I'm concerned it siphoned off almost all the interest I had in the emotions of the main characters.
Anyways, I still like you better than Atom Egoyan.
All the best,
Mistress La Spliffe
2 commenti:
how about that schlock ending? talk about suspension of belief. baby in a suitcase? gimme a break! they all get ankle alarms nowadays. as for the actors managing to pretend to speak Russian, i have it on good authority that it was pretty pisspoor painful pretension - like earcurdlingly bad.
I guess that explains why he couldn't do the Russian bits in Russian but it's a shitty excuse. You want to portray an ethnic group? Fuckin' hire a couple of them, and a bunch of language coaches.
There's something just so dismissive about this sort of arbitrary 'look, a bunch of funny-talkin' people killing each other' shit. It's been done time without number to Italian-Americans and now that they've assimilated I guess it's the Russians' turn.
Yeah, by the time it got to the baby in the suitcase, I was already unsuspended over a dozen other things, like her uncle who was maybe-maybe-not ex-KGB looking like my Polish geography teacher from highschool and ALL of Viggo's lines whilst in the hospital. Why make words so stupid come out of something that pretty?
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