Demob Happy

Dirtier, not so pretty things

8/10

With ‘History of Violence’ David Cronenberg initially seemed to have made a change of direction from the ‘body horror’ genre which he popularised. On closer examination however, both that film and ‘Eastern Promises’ – which share Viggo Mortensen in the lead role – graft classic Cronenberg themes on to more prosaic contexts. There is less pseudo-science and fantasy about these films (the former set in suburbia and the latter in the London criminal underworld) but they are no less powerfully subversive for that. Cronenberg has claimed that his films should be viewed “from the point of view of the disease”, and it is the corruptive nature of criminal violence that provides the physical stigma in both these films.

In ‘Eastern Promises’, Vigo Mortensen’s menacing Russian Mafia goonda Nikolai’s body is heavily marked by the ‘vory v zakone’ tattoos that tell a story of a life in crime. Cronenberg films these marks as dark, almost cancerous stains, which is redolent of his earlier works such as The Fly. The violence is again unflinchingly visceral, in particular in a centre-piece fight in which a naked Nikolai fends off a knife attack in a Turkish bath. The vivid lacerations of the skin force the the viewer to confront their debilitating physical impact. Imagine if Cronenberg had filmed Reservoir Dogs, he certainly would not have spared us Mr Blonde’s severing of the cop’s ear, but rather given it a close up.

‘Eastern Promises’ begins with a hemorrhaging fourteen-year-old Ukranian prostitute dying in childbirth. The baby survives, but its violent eruption also suggests that hallmark of the ‘body horror’ genre, the alien bursting from the stomach in Ridley Scott’s classic. The fact that the baby is the product of rape on a virgin compounds this notion of the physical contamination. The purity of the prostitutes’ naked bodies are shown in stark contrast throughout the film to the sinewey and beastial tatooed torsoes of Nikolai and Kirill.

Written by Steve Knight, whose previous credits include Stephen Frears’ decent ‘Dirty Pretty Things’, ‘Eastern Promises’ is a darker, more claustrophobic film. Its characters undergo torturous physical – even spiritual – transformations in a way that deliberately undermines and clouds its conclusion. One suspects the Russian accents have been overdone in places, but this is as unsettling and provocative as cinema gets.

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