Review - Eastern Promises, January 31, 2008
I've decided to add art reviews to the site, not in the traditional see it/don't see it, buy it/don't buy it sense, but as an examination of the aesthetic values in films, games, and music.
{As my reviews will not be spoilers, I won’t be discussing this film’s climactic fight scene; of course, the fight left me a little speechless, outside of shouting ‘Uggg!’ in wide-eyed disbelief near the end of it, so I’m not sure what I’d have to say about it anyway.}
I almost want to describe Eastern Promises as typical David Cronenberg, but I’m not sure there is anything typical about Cronenberg or this movie. Its imagery is at times visceral and shocking – fingers get chopped off, throats get split open, the kind of things we’ve come to expect from this director – but other times it’s beautifully understated and subtle. The subtlety is what fascinated me the most; I don’t recall seeing the sun in this movie, except possibly at the end. The pitch black nights and gloomy, rainy, overcast days mirror the immorality of the underground criminal world depicted in the film: in the Russian mafia, there is nothing good - there’s just evil, and at times, something slightly less than evil.
Tattoos are stories in Eastern Promises, as the mafia use them to signify the rank and lifetime achievements of their members. There is some attention paid to artistry in their application, they aren’t pretty but they’re created with skill and solemn respect and as such are elevated beyond a personal resume. Ironically, they’re also used in this film to misidentify, to redirect, confuse, and mislead - it’s a duality of purpose simple enough to accept yet intricate enough to alter the entire course of a story.
I can’t easily summarize the artistry in this film; I’ll still be thinking about Eastern Promises years from now, still digesting its visuals, plot, and symbolism. There’s something quite profound in all of it, something that I believe can’t help but seep its way into the viewer’s psyche. On some level, like a typically insecure artist, I’m intimidated by just how good it was. On another, I look forward to seeing how far it lodged itself in my subconscious and it what ways it alters the work I produce from now on.