Anna (Naomi Watts) is a midwife at a North London hospital. One night, a young pregnant girl arrives and dies while giving birth. She leaves behind a diary, and Anna, in her curiosity, takes it home with her. A business card is nestled within the diary’s pages. It belongs to a Trans-Siberian restaurant. Anna promptly pays the place a visit, and is greeted by the establishment’s owner, an old man named Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl). He leads her inside his restaurant, where two little girls await him, playing violin music. He stops them, for their playing is imperfect, and shows them how to use their instruments correctly.
It’s a very small moment, but one which is perfectly in keeping with the themes of “Eastern Promises.” Director David Cronenberg’s earlier works, such as “Existenz,” “Naked Lunch,” and “Crash (1996),” were more visibly steeped within the grotesque.
They were obvious nightmares. But “Eastern Promises,” like 2005’s “A History of Violence,” is not about strange surfaces, but rather is about the disgusting, violent, terrible things that hide under mundane veils.
The aforementioned scene, for instance, might appear cheerful ““ even heartwarming. But in the conversations that follow, something is inexplicably off. Semyon seems too calculating, with his paused, measured and excessively exact responses.
The scene, supposedly a happy tour of the old man’s business, is shot in dark colors ““ moody greens, browns and reds. The audience can easily sense the dangerous aura pervading the restaurant, even before we know its purpose.
Eventually, it is revealed that Semyon, his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and their driver, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), all belong to the “vory v zakone,” a Russian crime sect whose members tattoo cryptic stars onto their bodies. The restaurant is just a cover for their dealings. By then, we have already understood that the film is about unexpected surprises, concealed identities and guarded motives.
The film is also about broken promises. The shattered dreams of Russian immigrants who hoped for a better life in England, but are trapped by the very organization they thought they could forget.
And keeping with the theme of broken promises, the film itself breaks a few, at least in respect to its audience.
Anna, who begins as the main character, ends up becoming a throwaway detail, a vessel to lead us into the criminal underworld. Once we meet the vory v zakone, we more or less stay with them. Most importantly, we stay with Nikolai, who turns into the true centerpiece.
“Eastern Promises” is a film that allows the viewer to get lost within its visual fabric. There are few dull spots to endanger our immersion into the generalized mood of the movie.
And the performances, especially those by Mortensen, Mueller-Stahl and Cassel, are not just adequate; the actors seem like they organically belong inside the movie’s crime-infested milieu. Every twitch, frown and grimace seems like an extension of the plot, not the product of artificial histrionics.
““ Guido Pellegrini
E-mail Pellegrini at gpellegrini@media.ucla.edu.