{"id":8002,"date":"2017-09-19T19:35:16","date_gmt":"2017-09-19T23:35:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=8002"},"modified":"2018-06-28T13:34:25","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T17:34:25","slug":"scene-of-an-anatomy-viggo-mortensen-in-eastern-promises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/scene-of-an-anatomy-viggo-mortensen-in-eastern-promises\/","title":{"rendered":"Scene of an Anatomy: Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

While David Cronenberg has been synonymous with \u201cbody horror\u201d for most of his career, it has been close to two decades since he made a feature (1999\u2019s eXistenZ<\/i>) that could be classified as such. (It\u2019s also been that long since he directed one based on his own script.) In that time, his subjects have ranged from thrillers both psychological (Spider<\/i>) and criminal (A History of Violence<\/i>, Eastern Promises<\/i>) to the historical drama (A Dangerous Method<\/i>) and contemporary satire (Cosmopolis<\/i>, Maps to the Stars<\/i>). Of those, the one that veers closest to body horror is 2007\u2019s Eastern Promises<\/i>, released 10 years ago this month. In it, Viggo Mortensen (Cronenberg\u2019s leading man of choice at the time) plays Nikolai, an up-and-comer who has modified his body by getting an array of tattoos to infiltrate the Russian mob in London.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cannily, like a horror filmmaker revealing his monster piece by piece, Cronenberg unveils Nikolai\u2019s body art one body part at a time. Even the most attentive viewer may not register the initial glimpses of the ring-like tattoos on his fingers and the small one on his wrist, but Cronenberg lingers on the one on the back of his right hand long enough that it would be impossible to miss. And the same goes for the ones on his forearms when he rolls up his sleeves to process a corpse that needs to be gotten rid of. (All part of the job when you\u2019re a chauffeur for the mob.) Their meaning and purpose is helpfully explained by a Scotland Yard detective when the body washes up on the shore, having been unceremoniously dumped in the river. \u201cIn Russian prisons, your life story is written on your body in tattoos,\u201d the detective says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have tattoos, you don\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>More of Nikolai\u2019s life story is hinted at in a subsequent scene set in a brothel showing the tattoos on his thigh, chest (a cross), and abdomen, leaving the curious to wonder if there are any parts of his body that aren\u2019t <\/i>covered in them. The answer arrives about 35 minutes later, when Nikolai is being cross-examined by the heads of several Russian mob families before he is to receive the stars on his knees and over his heart that indicate he is a member of vory v zakone<\/i> (literally, \u201cthief in law\u201d). Then and only then does Mortensen completely strip off his Armani suit to expose the ink all over his body \u2014 and, oh yes, that the once and future Aragorn is positively ripped.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is confirmed in the scene that follows, which requires a little set-up because Eastern Promises<\/i> tells two stories in parallel \u2014 one on the surface and the other running underneath it. The surface one involves a half-Russian midwife named Anna (played by Naomi Watts) who comes into contact with the underworld in the week between Christmas and New Year\u2019s when a 14-year-old \u00e9migr\u00e9 named Tatiana dies while giving birth in her hospital and she makes it her business to find out where the girl is from so her baby doesn\u2019t get swallowed up by the British foster-care system. (Screenwriter Steven Knight adds another layer of urgency by making Anna a would-be mother herself who recently lost her own baby.)<\/span><\/p>\n

A business card for the Trans-Siberian restaurant brings Anna to the business front of London mob boss Semyan (Armin Mueller-Stahl), whose son Kirill (Vincent Casell) is being groomed to take over for him. The problem is Kirill is a born troublemaker who invites it to their doorstep by ordering a hit on a fellow vor<\/i> for gossiping about his sexuality (a real handicap in such a homophobic subculture). This in turn brings a pair of Chechen contract killers to town and leaves Semyan with no alternative but to elevate Nikolai (who was, up to that point, being brought along more slowly) so he can take Kirill\u2019s place. What\u2019s ironic about this is Semyan doesn\u2019t know at the time that Nikolai is working undercover for the government, although he has suspicions. (\u201cFor driver,\u201d he says, \u201cyou are well-informed.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, to save Kirill\u2019s skin, however unworthy it may be, Nikolai is primed to meet a violent end at a public bathhouse \u2014 in the sauna, no less. \u201cSemyan recommends these places for business meetings,\u201d says the underling who sets him up, \u201cbecause you can see what tattoos a man has.\u201d The only ones the Chechens are interested in, though, are the stars telling them they\u2019ve found their mark. As naked and seemingly defenseless as Nikolai is, however, he\u2019s more than capable of defending himself, eliminating his fully-clothed assailants in the space of three flesh-piercing, bone-crunching minutes. It\u2019s the most primal action scene in Cronenberg\u2019s filmography, illustrating that he could have been a mainstream action director had he chosen to go down that path when Hollywood beckoned in the mid-\u201980s. (Imagine what Cronenberg\u2019s Top Gun<\/i> would have been like.)<\/span><\/p>\n

What makes the sequence especially unnerving is there\u2019s no fantastical element \u2014 such as the telepathy in Scanners<\/i>, the hallucinations in Videodrome<\/i> and Naked Lunch<\/i>, or the slow genetic mutation in The Fly<\/i> \u2014 to place the audience at a remove from the violence. Instead, like Nikolai, they\u2019re suddenly confronted by two brutes with sharp knives (which they\u2019ve already put to use once) who have to get up close and personal to do their job. Like Tatiana\u2019s rape at Semyan\u2019s brothel (described in her diary, but tastefully not shown) that resulted in her pregnancy and death, the assault on Nikolai is similarly coded, although he\u2019s able to turn the tables on his attackers, using their own weapons against them. And like Tatiana, Nikolai is wheeled into Anna\u2019s hospital on a gurney, bloodied and bruised, but at least he can get up and walk out on his own power in time to rescue her daughter, who is delivered to Anna, the woman who helped deliver her. Considering how rare happy endings are in Cronenberg\u2019s films, this practically counts as a Christmas miracle.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Craig J. Clark<\/a> lives in Bloomington, Ind., has never been to a sauna like this one.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While David Cronenberg has been synonymous with \u201cbody horror\u201d for most of his career, it has been close to two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":8003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}