London Film Festival Special: Cronenberg Delivers Eastern Promises

"David's got a wicked sense of humour," smiles Naomi Watts, a few hours before the Canadian director's latest feature Eastern Promises opens the London Film Festival. "Thank you," Cronenberg replies quietly, adding, "The set was very funny... it really is fun, if you do it right." Their comments are seemingly at odds with a film which has been reduced by many to a single, already-infamous sequence where a naked Viggo Mortensen fends off a couple of vicious, fully-clothed Chechen assassins in a sauna in London's Finsbury Park. Renowned for his graphic portrayals of physical trauma, Cronenberg delivers a sequence of intense brutality which is such a far-cry from standardised, sanitised Hollywood, that it's not surprising the scene has found such infamy. That said, the film's periodic lashings of blood and brutality are punctuated by equally unpredictable moments of wry, often dark humour, be it Russian gangsters casually prepping a body to be dumped, or Mortensen's mysterious Nikolai trying, and failing, to start Watts' motorcycle: "Take a bus" Nikolai soon deadpans.

Set in the murky underworld of London's Russian mafia, Eastern Promises offers a view of the city rarely seen even by those who call it their home. Indeed, the only recognisable landmark on offer is the Gherkin building in the City, and this only appears fleetingly in the background of a single shot. The notion of capturing the 'real' London resonated particularly strongly amongst the crew, most of whom were local. "The crew were pretty excited to be shooting there instead of Notting Hill," Cronenberg states dryly. Although the film's story is instigated when Watts' midwife Anna looks to uncover the identity of a young migrant girl who has died in childbirth, this is Mortensen's show. Having already worked with Cronenberg on his previous feature A History of Violence, the former King of Gondor is totally convincing as the mysterious Nikolai, the shadowy associate of a ruthless Russian crime family. His subtle, restrained performance was, according to Cronenberg, undertaken "with a great sense of humour". Further dispelling the myth of the introverted character-actor, the director adds, "After 'cut' he's still Viggo, and you can still joke with him".

Viggo's performance immediately elevates the film above the 'issue-movie' label that some have been quick to attach. Although the relatively low-profile crime of people-trafficking is a major element of the story, it is also a backdrop, with themes of family and identity receiving more attention in Steven Knight's screenplay. Nikolai remains a mysterious character for much of the story, his behaviour and motivation rarely clear, and his few words and restricted body-language giving little away. We're offered similar conundrums in the form of Anna's Russian uncle, Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski), whose alleged background in the KGB may not be as crazy as it first seems, and Tatiana, the teenage migrant whose death in the film's opening scenes initiates the story. We hear her diary-extracts read in periodic posthumous voiceover as Anna has them gradually translated, turning her from an anonymous and unidentified fatality into a rounded and tragic victim of eastern promises, as well as a warning of the savage criminal world into which Anna inadvertantly stumbles.

Through such past classics as The Fly, Videodrome, Scanners and the infamous Crash, Cronenberg is renowned for his fascination with how the human body interacts with the outside world, and the relationship between biology and machinery. Taking this into account, it's perhaps not so surprising that there are no firearms in Eastern Promises, although this was the case even before the screenplay came to Cronenberg's attention. Instead, the violence is instigated with blades and razors - generally anything with a sharp edge. "To kill someone with a knife is a very intimate, perverse act," the director explains, "it means you feel them, you smell them, you hear them breathing." Similarly, Knight's screenplay draws attention to the 'story' of tattoos that characterizes the Vory V Zakone brotherhood to which Nikolai's family belongs. A particularly intimate scene towards the film's finale sees Nikolai fully initiated, after years as a mere 'driver', and an elder reading his life-story through the myriad tattoos that already decorate his body. With reference to the sauna assassination-attempt, Cronenberg explains that the assassins "would be destroying the tattoo-pattern on [Nikolai's] body, and would leave a message for other people not to betray them."

The film has met with overwhelmingly positive reviews, including, as it turns out, the indirect mark of approval from the Russian mafia itself. "Over the net we've discovered we get two thumbs up from Russian criminals" Cronenberg states, adding with a sly smile, "We're just not sure whose thumbs they are..."

Click here for a full review of the film. This article can also be read at reviews site The Smell of Napalm

London Film Festival Special: The Assassination of Jesse James, and the Western Revival

After two and a half years irritating studio executives in post-production purgatory, Andrew Dominik's The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford has finally taken a bow at the London Film Festival. As a poetic and brooding deconstruction of the violent life and equally violent death of one of America's most mythologised outlaws, the film is a magnetic character-study and stunning addition to the modern Western genre. While Brad Pitt is on fine form as the darkly charismatic killer struggling with the scale of his own myth and the traitorous admiration of those closest to him, it is Casey Affleck who proves the true revelation as the conflicted Robert Ford, the teenager whose hero-worship creates one of the most reviled and misunderstood villains in American history.

The Western is currently experiencing a stuttering comeback, with The Assassination Of Jesse James being the fourth addition to the genre in a little over a year. Although set in the Australian Outback rather than the American West, John Hillcoat's under-seen The Proposition was among the best cinematic offerings of 2006. Written by Nick Cave (who also provides part of the soundtrack and a cameo appearance in The Assassination Of Jesse James), The Proposition stars Guy Pearce as a captured outlaw faced with the task of bringing in one deranged brother in exchange for the life of another. Despite the specifics of the location, the film remains a hypnotic Western, providing a visceral insight into the lawlessness of frontier-life, and the physical and psychological traumas of those banished to the far corners of the earth.

Whereas The Assassination Of Jesse James and The Proposition account for some of the best of the past year in cinema, let alone the genre, the other end of the spectrum has been equally well represented. Seraphim Falls tells the story of Liam Neeson's stubborn and vengeful former Confederate soldier, chasing Pierce Brosnan's guilt-racked Unionist from one corner of the continental United States to the other. The reasons for the chase are revealed to the audience only in scattered flashback until the story's finale, but in the end are not really worth the wait. The film's primary appeal lies in its stunning visuals, with veteran cinematographer John Toll capturing an endless collection of spectacular vistas, as the leads wander from the frozen North-West through the prairie-land to the desert, in search of anything resembling a story. The film can be read as a cinematic celebration of America at its most raw and most beautiful, at a time when the country was still being shaped by the throes of Manifest Destiny. A cross-section of human encounters, from isolated rancher-pioneers through to religious nomads, railroad developers and opportunistic native Americans, add to the sense of cultural diversity that will create the modern America in the century following the story's setting. It's just a pity the screenplay wasn't subject to the same level of attention.

The cast is the draw in 3:10 to Yuma, a remake of the 1957 film of the same name. Russell Crowe is the apparently cold-hearted outlaw Ben Wade, captured in the aftermath of a violent stagecoach robbery, while Christian Bale is penniless rancher Dan Evans, who joins the posse charged with transporting the prisoner to the town of Contention for the eponymous 3:10 prison train. Despite committed performances from the two leads, the film is a straightforward genre-piece that ticks all the boxes, and has nothing new to add to the genre beyond a grittier tone and more blood. Crowe may be the cold-hearted thief and killer, but A-List stardom carries its own responsiblities at the box-office; Wade sketches animals, effortlessly sweet-talks women into bed, and even kills a man for disrespecting his own mother. As a result Wade is more an edgy badboy than a villain. The true antagonist is Ben Foster's Charlie Prince, Wade's righthand man. With Foster lacking Crowe's A-List status, Prince is a psychotic murderer and simpleton who shoots anything that moves and apparently takes pleasure in doing so. As a studio genre piece, his fate is never in doubt.

Although the Western is currently inconsistent in the quality stakes, the gritty, edgy feel, apparently truer to the age, continues to unite the genre. No longer aimed at young, tea-time audiences, the genre has darkened, perhaps in a bid to keep up with the times. While Kevin Costner deconstructed the myth of the cinematic native American (with a healthy dose of fantasy, say the tribes of the Mid-West), in Dances With Wolves, Clint Eastwood deconstructed the myth of the gunfighter and what it means to kill a man, in his stunning Unforgiven. With the stories of Wyatt Earp also re-addressed in the early 90s with the less iconic Tombstone and Wyatt Earp, the genre left few fresh angles until Kevin Costner delivered Open Range in 2003. The times have, of course, changed since 9/11, and cinema has come to reflect this. With even James Bond beginning to feel the pain of his injuries, audiences have been deemed ready for a further revision of life in the Old West, one stained with blood, poverty and stunning cruelty.

With America's conduct in the global community inviting intense scrutiny and criticism, it's perhaps easier to understand why Hollywood is keen to look back at the history that created the country's character and fierce national pride. From the stunning geography through to the straightforward concepts of defending the homestead from wrong-doers, feeding loved ones and seeking justice for those who defy the law, the Western has a purity and a simplicity of ideals that can be seen to distract from the moral complications of living in a modern world dominated by covert conflicts that play to unknown rules. But although the Old West may have been more black and white, Hollywood's recent depictions have hardly been inviting. Still, entries such as The Assassination Of Jesse James suggest the genre may still be relevant to the modern world for some time to come.