Eastern Promises

When I heard Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with Eastern Promises director David Cronenberg and lead actor Viggo Mortensen, I could tell that she had been unusually impressed by certain aspects of the film. This is high praise. After years of interviewing everyone who is anyone for NPR, Terry Gross is a pretty tough customer. But even her gushing did not quite prepare me for how good Viggo Mortensen would be in the film, or how fresh and original a scene they spoke of at length, a bloody duel to the death in a Russian bath, would appear on screen.


I lived in Russia for a total of three years. I lived primarily in Moscow, but did spend two summers in the island of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk, a far less European place. While there, I heard hundreds of English speakers stumble with Russian. I also met many unsavory mucky mucks, for whom I worked as an English tutor. Viggo Mortensen has somehow managed to not only speak Russian with a very convincing accent, but to embody the peculiar soulful emptiness of this tiny subset of Russia: the ruthless romantic affluent male. I am still wondering over it. Were this group a little more visible, more people would know what an incredible feat of transmutation he has accomplished. As it is…well, I know, and that’s something anyway.


Unfortunately for the film, Mr. Mortensen is too good. No one else is remotely convincing as a member of the London Russian mob. Not Frenchman Vincent Cassel, who plays the archetypal son and heir, nor Armin Mueller-Stah in the role of boss. Their bungled Russian and sinister leers would work fine without any competition, but as soon as Mortensen enters the scene, they look like actors trying to be Russian mobsters. Not good.


Naomi Watts does a very good job playing an English midwife who stumbles upon a secret, but she too is supposed to be half Russian, and that is absurd. Russian people have a very specific look. They have high cheekbones and almond eyes and, well you can just tell if someone is Russian. Only one person in this film actually looks Russian, a whore who makes good. That annoyed me.


In fact, the whole concept of the film, that David Cronenberg could pull back the curtain on
London’s most elusive mob, annoys me. They didn’t even know that Russian prisoners covered themselves in tattoos until Mortensen showed them a book about it. A book? It sounds like Mortensen was also the only one of the bunch to actually go to Russia. I mean really. I think Americans are too complacent about their ignorance of Russians and Russian culture. We think of Russians as second class Europeans, poorer and more religious and with less good food. They lie somewhere between the French and the Chinese on our Cultures We Don’t Get continuum. We don’t get the French just enough to know we should cast French speaking actors in roles, as Atonement did. We don’t get the Chinese at all, so we pretty much let Ang Lee cover it, as he did so well in Lust Caution. But Hollywood doesn’t even seem to try when it comes to Russian themes. And Russians know it. They watch these films. They know we don’t get them and don’t try to get them, even as they try harder and harder to get us.


My advice to Hollywood is this: slide Russia to one end of that continuum. Either cast Russians in Russian roles, or find a talented Russian director to do the dirty work for you. This is just not working for me.