November 5, 2024
By Koraljka Suton
Two years after working with Hollywood’s Renaissance man Viggo Mortensen on A History of Violence (2005), king of body horror David Cronenberg cast the versatile actor in what would become their second out of four collaborations to date. The 2007 gangster film Eastern Promises not only led to the actor-director duo gaining further acclaim, but also brought Mortensen his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor (additional nominations followed in 2016 for Captain Fantastic and in 2018 for Green Book). And rightfully so. Co-starring opposite Naomi Watts and Vincent Cassel, Mortensen morphs into the epitome of the saying ‘still waters run deep’ in his subtle but powerful portrayal of a Russian criminal with a mysterious past. Steven Knight, the man behind the script that zooms in on London’s seedy underbelly, is no stranger to exploring ingrained subcultures in his work, having penned the screenplay to Dirty Pretty Things, Stephen Frears’ 2002 social thriller centering on illegal immigrants who become targets of organ trafficking. And embedded subcultures were something that fascinated Cronenberg as well, as he confirmed in a 2007 interview for Film Comment conducted by Amy Taubin: “Those strangely enclosed little worlds where rules are made up and become like the laws of nature. I was intrigued by that very intense hothouse climate.” Principal photography took place in London, making Eastern Promises Cronenberg’s first picture to be filmed outside his native Canada in its entirety.
The movie opens with two gruesome deaths—the first one caused by a razor blade and the second one being a result of hemorrhaging—signaling off the bat that violence is an integral part of the world the protagonists of Eastern Promises inhabit. But our entry ticket into that universe becomes a character living on the outskirts of it. Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) is a midwife who moved back in with her mother Helen (Sinéad Cusack) and her Russian uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski) after suffering a bad breakup and a miscarriage. While Anna is on the job, a teenage immigrant dies during childbirth, but her baby survives. Anna finds a diary on the girl’s body, written in Russian, and a calling card for a place called the Trans-Siberian Restaurant. Her uncle, who claims to be a former KGB officer, declines to translate the diary due to its contents, cautioning Anna that this is something she should not be getting herself into. Determined to find the baby’s relatives so that the child doesn’t end up in the foster system, the midwife decides to take the diary elsewhere.
Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), the owner of the Trans-Siberian Restaurant, seems like a genuinely kind-hearted individual who claims never to have heard of the teenage girl. But when Anna mentions the existence of the diary, he becomes a little too keen on getting his hands on it—and a tad too interested in coming into possession of the original, as opposed to the photocopy Anna brings him the very next day. Semyon is not the only Russian Anna comes across. His son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) is an alcoholic and closeted homosexual who never fails to disappoint his father and is always accompanied by his driver and friend Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). Anna soon finds out that Semyon is the head of vory v zákoně (thieves in law), a Russian mobster elite that deals in drugs, prostitution and human trafficking.
Anna is a fascinating character to follow. After involuntarily stepping one pinky toe into the hermetic criminal underworld that exists in her hometown, she does not back down, but rather doubles down on her decision to get answers and use them for the greater good. And the greater good implies the potential of a happy life for a parentless child. Still, her at times stubborn quest is in no way incidental or arbitrary—the midwife is deeply driven not just by her ingrained sense of empathy and humanity, but also by her personal trauma stemming from the loss of a wanted baby. She, a mother without a child, seeks to find a family for a child without a mother. It is as if by reconnecting the child with a mother figure and a happy home, she would get a chance to heal her own child-shaped wound in a roundabout way—at least one of them would be getting the family they need and deserve. But in spite of this drive, Anna is not naïve in her pursuit. While a part of her does feel a pull towards the Russian-speaking world because it ties her to her roots, she quickly recognizes that she is treading dangerous waters and decides to listen to her instincts by turning to and pleading with the one person from inside the mob whose actions make him seem like a trustworthy person possessing some remnants of a moral compass. And that person is Nikolai.
And while Anna is an outsider looking in, trying not to get sucked into a wormhole that has the potential of swallowing her whole, Nikolai is an outsider who willingly resides within the wormhole itself. He is not yet an official member of vory v zákoně, but strives to become one. Just as hermetically sealed as the community he belongs to, the driver is an enigma whose motifs and agenda remain a mystery for the majority of the film. There is no doubt about the fact that he is a very dangerous man. But the compassion he shows proves itself to be an uncharacteristic trait of the microcosm he is rooted in. His identity is multifaceted: Nikolai possesses an air of impenetrable mystery, while at the same time wearing his life trajectory on his body in the form of numerous tattoos he acquired in a Russian prison. It should come as no surprise that Cronenberg of all people would make a film that puts an emphasis on the body and its potential for modifications.
In many ways, body is identity. It is through our bodies that we communicate our truths (or lies) and relate to the world around us and the people in it. Our identities can be ascertained from the way that we walk, talk and hold ourselves, the way our bodies instinctively react when faced with danger, uncertainty or the promise of possibility. Our marks and scars tell stories about encounters with outside forces that ended up being too much for our bodies to bear. But it goes even deeper than that: our entire genetic makeup is laden with information about our ancestry and the trials and tribulations our forefathers had to go through for us to be able to live and breathe in this point in time. Anna’s body speaks of a loss needing to be grieved, as well as a heritage wanting to be explored. Kirill’s body drenched in shame and self-loathing talks about a yearning desiring to be fulfilled, one he subdues by numbing his body and all the feelings and sensations that reside within it. And Nikolai’s body tells the tale of an overly controlled, highly capable observer, indicating that there’s more to him than he lets on.
This question of identity is a big one in Eastern Promises, enabling Cronenberg’s film to transcend the crime genre and venture into the territory of deep character study, exploring closed systems and the adaptations that people go through in order to remain inside them. In that respect, Nikolai’s tattoos enable the members of one such closed system to read him like an open book because his naked body tells a story in a secret language only those deeply familiar with it can understand. And it is those members that get to determine whether his story makes him worthy enough to become an integral part of their system. Surprisingly enough, tattoos weren’t originally as prominent a theme in Knight’s script. They were merely alluded to. It was Mortensen who conducted research of his own and came to Cronenberg with the two-volume book Russian Criminal Tattoo (2003), as well as the 2001 documentary The Mark of Cain, directed by Mortensen’s friend Alix Lambert (the actor would go on to star in Lambert’s 2014 short called 7 Impressions of Viggo). This material greatly influenced the rewrites, with the tattoos giving the story “a real visual and metaphorical center,” as Cronenberg put it.
Further instances of Viggo going the extra mile for his role (as he usually does) can be found in one of the most memorable scenes of Eastern Promises. The scene in the steam bath has the actor naked and vulnerable, fighting off two knife-wielding Chechen gangsters with his bare hands. The fight was outlined in the script as “Two men come in with knives and there’s a fight,” meaning that details such as choreography and nudity were neither addressed nor described. When asked about it, the director said: “That is the work of many months working with the actors, and with Carol Spier, the production designer, and with the stunt coordinator. If I had had an actor who wouldn’t play it naked, I would have had to shoot it with a towel around him, which would have been pretty silly, or I would have had to shoot it in a very restrained way. But for Viggo, there was no question. He said, “I have to do it naked.” That freed me to do it the way it had to be done. It took three days to shoot, but planning went on constantly. Every week, we’d work on it and refine it more and more. Viggo got really bruised. He didn’t tell me, but the makeup people did. They had to keep covering his bruises.”
The result? A fantastically choreographed and visceral fight scene that inevitably stays with the viewer long after the end credits have rolled. Which is nothing short of a testament to the intensity of the violence showcased in Eastern Promises, seeing as how the movie contains very few instances of it. In other words, what the film “lacks” in quantity, it makes up for in quality—the scenes in question are small and almost intimate, centering on only a couple of characters who use not guns, but knives (and at one point, a razor blade) as their weapons of choice. You can cram a plethora of scenes depicting gun violence into a movie and still be miles away from the effect that a couple of knife sequences in Eastern Promises managed to have. Because with knives, the intensity we as the viewers experience lies in the witnessing of the process that unfolds before us as the perpetrator and the victim get up close and personal. It is unnerving and unsettling. It makes our muscles clench and our eyes look away. This is our bodies’ attempt at shielding themselves from the full impact of what the victim is going through—which is an excruciatingly painful fading away into nothingness.
Eastern Promises was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, five British Independent Film Awards (with Mortensen taking home the prize for Best Actor) and won the Audience Prize for best film at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Following its well-deserved success and critical acclaim, the year 2010 saw Cronenberg and the cast discuss a potential sequel taking place in Russia. But two years later, Mortensen confirmed that the much-expected follow-up wasn’t happening because producer James Schamus at Focus Features had decided to pull the plug on it. Sequel or no sequel, Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises will forever remain a cult film that went well beyond its genre, tackling the complex theme of identity and how it is shaped in the context of closed communities. Because crime stories in and of themselves were never of much interest to the director, to begin with: “I was watching Miami Vice the other night and I realized I’m not interested in the mechanics of the mob, but criminality and people who live in a state of perpetual transgression—that is interesting to me.” And as it turns out, that is interesting to us as well.
Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »
STEVEN KNIGHT
“It was the perfect relationship between a writer and a director. David had a very clear vision, so we had a quite brief meeting and then I went off and did the work that we agreed needed to be done. The reality is so bizarre and upsetting that I had to tone it down for the script. Slavery usually happens in normal suburban streets; you don’t see it, yet it’s going on around you. Similarly, it was a revelation to me how different Eastern nationalities—Russian, Chinese, and Turkish—all operate in unique ways while forging links with each other. The police have difficulty penetrating these underworlds, yet these groups who exist within London are almost self–policing in that they try not to cause too much antagonism outside their own group.” —Steven Knight
“A good script will induce you to contribute to it, to be creative. And in this case, Steven Knight has a very good ear for immigrant speech and a great sense of multiculturalism, the idea of subcultures living within other cultures. [These ideas] were very present and attractive to me in the script for Eastern Promises. Another of the strengths of Steven’s scripts and this one in particular is that they avoid the clichés of the mob movie. [This script] somehow subverted those clich’es while being able to still use the strengths of narrative and suspense that are innate within the mob movie.”
—David Cronenberg
Screenwriter must-read: Steven Knight’s screenplay for Eastern Promises [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.
Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Eastern Promises, Peaky Blinders, Locke) provides an insightful and honest analysis of his craft, speaking about three specific craft areas in relation to his works: structure, dialogue and protagonists.
Notes from the production of Eastern Promises.
Genesis, Concept, Casting
Eastern Promises has been brought to the screen through a unique creative collaboration forged among a Canadian auteur, a British screenwriter, producers and crew from both countries as well as the U.S., and a leading man able to fully inhabit a complex character. Even before director David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen had memorably teamed up for one of the most acclaimed films of 2005, A History of Violence, screenwriter Steve Knight was searching for a follow-up to what would later be made as his acclaimed first feature, Dirty Pretty Things. Knight knew that he wanted to keep writing about intriguing subject matter—and people and places in London that are often overlooked. Knight reflects, “I wrote Dirty Pretty Things because I was interested in the stories of the ‘other London’ beneath the surface, the London of newly arrived immigrants. I felt it was an area that could be explored in more than one feature. Dirty Pretty Things was about an African and a Turk, and Eastern Promises is about another community and another experience.” Producer Paul Webster comments, “The London that has emerged in the last 20 years is a polyglot society. Eastern Promises is one of the first films to emphasize that. I saw it as a companion piece to Steve’s earlier work, in that there is a thriller element in a part of London we don’t know about.”
Originally, Knight had been commissioned to write an hourlong telefilm script about Eastern European “people traffic.” Using that trade as a point of origin (both geographically and character-wise), his narrative moved into exploring those who profit from it. This criminal brotherhood is the Vory V Zakone (pronounced “vor-ee sack-o-nee”), “which is a real organization,” reveals Knight. It soon became apparent that the new script warranted feature film treatment. Knight called on resources in London and New York to be able to meet with criminals in both cities, as well as the London police, the Russian-assigned desk in London’s West End, and the FBI in the U.S. Knight admits, “The reality is so bizarre and upsetting that I had to tone it down for the script. Slavery usually happens in normal suburban streets; you don’t see it, yet it’s going on around you. Similarly, it was a revelation to me how different Eastern nationalities—Russian, Chinese, and Turkish—all operate in unique ways while forging links with each other. The police have difficulty penetrating these underworlds, yet these groups who exist within London are almost self–policing in that they try not to cause too much antagonism outside their own group.
“The character of Semyon is based on a real-life restaurant owner in New York. The character of Anna was written as a tribute to the midwife who delivered my eldest son at London’s Whittington Hospital—which we later used to double as the exterior of the hospital location in the movie. He elaborates, “The character of Anna was also my way of taking a conventional Londoner and leading her into this concealed world. Those two worlds don’t often meet, let alone collide, so I came up with the emergency Caesarean section as a way to bring the midwife and an enslaved 14-year-old girl together in the thriller context.” “The sex-trafficking trade is a huge industry in the U.K.,” reveals Webster. “Police records have shown that it is run predominantly by criminals of Eastern European descent.” Producers, and production companies, from Britain, Canada, and the U.S. joined forces to bring the script to the screen. Webster notes, “Steve tells accessible exciting stories, merging exotic elements into familiar environments. When I first read it in 2004, I felt the script was commercial, moving, exciting and castable. What we needed was a top director, which we finally got.”
Cronenberg remembers reading the script and being “immediately sucked into this intense little world of the criminal subculture in London. In a sense, Steve has reinvented the crime movie, because the script accesses all the great parts of that genre while inverting and subverting them in an interesting way. It’s not a retro movie; instead, it’s very modern and intense. “What I also found was that it offered a wonderful character study—particularly of Nikolai—and that I wanted to bring these characters to life.” Cronenberg began working with the screenwriter. Knight reports, “It was the perfect relationship between a writer and a director. David had a very clear vision, so we had a quite brief meeting and then I went off and did the work that we agreed needed to be done.”
Producer Robert Lantos, head of Toronto-based Serendipity Point Pictures, had worked on two previous films with Cronenberg. The producer says, “David has a unique and magical gift. He creates a mesmerizing, hypnotic reality on-screen. Working with him is always a rewarding and memorable experience. “It was David’s passion for Eastern Promises that initially sparked my interest. Steve’s powerful and timely screenplay, coupled with David’s masterful craftsmanship, made for an irresistible combination.” Lantos came aboard, and the film became a U.K./Canadian co-production, with the picture filmed on location in the U.K. and post-production completed in Canada. There was only one actor considered for the lead role of conflicted Vory V Zakone foot soldier Nikolai Luzhin. Cronenberg muses, “When I worked with Viggo Mortensen on A History of Violence, I noted that he had a kind of Russian or Slavic look to him. He is in fact half-Danish. After our experience on A History of Violence, I wanted to work with him again. In reading the script, I immediately thought of him. Viggo is a brilliant actor, beyond what people realize, and I believe that with Eastern Promises, that is going to be more evident. His character this time is very precise and controlled, and highly cautious. Nikolai seems at first glance to be a thug, but he also has a softness, and is therefore strong and delicate at the same time.”
“When we first meet Nikolai, he’s almost dead inside,” adds Knight. “He lives in a world of violence and as such is a violent person. But there is also a gentleness about him that comes as a surprise to Anna.” Mortensen says, “Nikolai is a man who has a lot of secrets. He came to London by way of the Ural mountain region, which is a kind of dividing mountain range a couple of time zones east of Moscow on the edge of the Siberian plain. He’s seen a lot and, being close to Kirill, is on the front lines of the family’s doings.” The actor’s assessment of the character’s history comes from an informed perspective; while preparing for the part, Mortensen spent weeks in Russia. He traveled to the Urals, among other places. He immersed himself in Russian culture, watching Russian movies and television, reading or re-reading the works of authors such as Vladimir Nabokov, listening to spoken-word tapes, and testing his knowledge of the language which he had studied in advance of the trip. He also did research on the sex trafficking trade and the gangs that are based in the Ural area.
Knight marvels, “He went away and immersed himself in that world—and spent time with a lot of very disreputable Russian people! I wrote the lines, but the heart and soul of Nikolai is really from Viggo.” During the film shoot, Mortensen had with him artifacts that he had brought back from Russia, including worry beads made in prison from melted-down plastic cigarette lighters. He decorated his trailer with copies of Russian icons, and created an atmosphere conducive to maintaining his character. Cronenberg reports, “He learned to speak Russian quite well for this role. He brings the intensity and humor and subtlety to Nikolai that he brings to every performance, all the while speaking with a Russian accent, so his voice has a different timbre than you’ve heard in his other movies. It’s a complete transformation from the inside out. He played two characters, really, in A History of Violence, and I saw traces of neither one of them in his portrayal of Nikolai.”
Says Webster, “Among actors, Viggo is completely unique in my experience because of his attention to detail; the research he did—months before we started to film—was incredible. He is an artist in his own right and brings an artist’s sensibility to the process, as well as an actor’s craft.” Mortensen says, “Being able to think about what I’d seen, by going to where the character was from, provides something real for scenes. I believe it’s helpful to the other actors, too, if I’m convincing.” To play opposite Mortensen, the production needed an actress of comparable stature. In Naomi Watts, they found her. Cronenberg notes, “Naomi has such respect in the acting community; there’s nobody who doesn’t say she’s a fantastic actress—as well as a total delight to work with. Both those things proved to be true. She’s incredibly easy to direct because she just gets it right away on the most subtle level. I’m sure there’s a lot of internal work that she does, but I never saw it. She would come to the set and nail it immediately. She gets the whole picture and accesses the inner life of the character. Of course, she’s a great beauty and her beauty is so valuable for her as an actress because it’s a down-to-earth, real beauty. It’s not so exotic that it’s hard for her to play a regular person. She can play a regular person and still glow.”
“Anna is very vulnerable, and has had loss in her life which is still affecting her. She starts to connect with the Russian half of her roots—her late father had emigrated to England—in investigating where this young woman came from, what the diary means, and what will become of the orphaned baby. Because she’s living a dreary English life, she’s drawn into the intense lives of the Russian immigrants who live in London. Nikolai scares her, yet she has a desire to flirt with danger; it’s her effort to scare herself back into the world. Naomi carries off all Anna’s changes and modulations with such grace.” Watts, who had long sought to work with Cronenberg, found Knight’s script to be “a page-turner, a really good thriller, and a window into a world that hasn’t been seen much. Anna has long denied her Russian culture, and at the start of the film is in quite a sad place in her life. She’s hiding behind her work and doesn’t want to spend too much time with her family because they just remind her of her past traumas. But what I love is that there is still a sense of danger in her, and she comes alive again through meeting Nikolai—he’s like the big bad wolf that intrigues her—and seeks to take control of the situation with the lost girl and orphaned baby. But it becomes clear that she’s getting into a world that’s much heavier than she can handle by herself, and she has to call on her family for help.”
Webster remarks, “Anna’s journey for not only the girl and the baby but herself lends an emotional core to the story. Naomi mixes empathy with a touch of stubborn hardness, to the character, so that while you sense Anna getting out of her depth you also feel her determination not to be afraid.” Given the production’s ties to the locale, Watts researched her role at Whittington Hospital. There, she witnessed a C-section and observed labor sessions with midwifes and birthing mothers. Watts states, “I was present at such powerful moments in another person’s life. It was earthy and beautiful and poetic. What midwives do is pretty extraordinary. It requires a huge amount of trust.” The leading lady also learned how to ride a Russian-made motorcycle. She laughs, “400 pounds of steel, and almost that many people standing by. There I was, riding through the streets of London; I couldn’t believe it. But I came to like it and, I’m pleased to say, can now put it on my list of skills. Also, I’d never signed on to do a movie without at least talking to the director and hearing about his vision, but I did on Eastern Promises. Then, David and I kept planning to meet but we only finally did when I arrived in London. Very unusual, but with someone like David you don’t panic, and when we did meet he instilled me with confidence.”
French actor Vincent Cassel then signed on as the volatile Kirill. Cronenberg remarks, “Think of Kirill like Saddam Hussein’s son; too much power, too little depth, and a lot of insecurities—a very dangerous combination. Unlike Nikolai, Kirill is passionate and emotional, so they’re an odd couple.” Knight adds, “Kirill is like a firework going off. He’s capable of great violence and great affection. His sheer energy and enthusiasm make him, in spite of everything he does, sympathetic.” Cronenberg notes, “If you live long enough, you get to work with the people you admire and want to work with. I’d met with Vincent before about other projects, and I thought of him when I read the screenplay. He proved to be wonderful, bringing out all the wildness, ambivalence, liveliness, and desperation that Steve had wonderfully written. Vincent communicates external and internal chaos on-screen with great precision and control; he’s a marvel to work with. I knew that his extreme looks and strong screen presence would allow him to match up well with Viggo.”
Cassel, though eager to work with Cronenberg and Mortensen, wasn’t sure he wanted to play “another villain. But I found this character to be multi-dimensional; Kirill is a victim of a very tough childhood. Yes, he’s violent and dangerous, but at the same time it’s touching because ‘the family business’ and a very dark father are all he knows. Kirill’s relationship with Nikolai exists on so many different levels, including jealousy. The biggest challenge for me was to be believable as a Russian with the accent and the Russian language, which I worked hard at.” Webster marvels, “It’s amazing to watch Vincent go from the reprobate to the mewling child of a harsh father. He does that so very well and uncovers the pathos in Kirill. You see him reduced to little-boy status every time his dad comes onto the scene, especially given Armin Mueller-Stahl’s effortless sense of command.” Cassel laughs, “Between scenes, Armin would glance over at me and say things like, ‘My son… my son…’ or ‘Why are you like that?’ So I would be the naughty son by doing things like moving Armin’s belongings around. We enjoyed doing this to each other!”
Mueller-Stahl is making his first significant screen appearance in several years in Eastern Promises. “Armin is somebody that I’ve taken note of for years—fantastic voice, fantastic face,” says Cronenberg. “His own life experience—being forced to leave East Germany—is all there in his countenance. Even before I met him, I sensed that there was an incredible sweetness to him but also an incredible power that could make you afraid at the same time. That was exactly what the role of Semyon required, because nobody is what he seems at the beginning of this movie. “Armin took on not just the role, but also accepted the challenge of speaking English with a Russian accent; for a German, that is difficult. But he just rose to the occasion, working with dialect and dialogue coaches to make his accent was correct, just like the actors half his age in the cast were.” Mueller-Stahl muses, “It’s a black piece of work, this story. Semyon is a very brutal man, and the world is full of those people. A monster is not visible, but is deep inside. The Vory stays secret because they are not visible. But it’s very important to show both sides of these monsters. Semyon has a very warm sentimental relationship with his granddaughter, and the same attitude to Russian music. There’s a certain tradition to playing a crime boss on-screen. Hopefully, I was able to do it my own way. On the set, David is friendly and also focused on the story, and on what needs to happen in a scene. When I met him the first time, I thought, ‘What a nice man—and his films are so scary.'”
Cronenberg met Irish-born actress Sinéad Cusack several times over the years, having directed her husband Jeremy Irons in two films (Dead Ringers and M. Butterfly). Eastern Promises finally gave the filmmaker the opportunity to offer her a role. Cusack was “over the moon to be working with David. All his films are so layered and atmospheric. I found this script to be grown-up; the characters very well-drawn, and anyone who has been reading the newspapers in recent years is very aware of what is going on with this human trafficking from Russia.” The director notes, “I didn’t want to cast Anna’s mother as a grandmotherly; I wanted her to be an attractive intense woman in her own right, as Steve suggested in the script. These two women, living together in the shadow of a double tragedy—the death of Anna’s Russian father and the death of her child—makes for an intense little household, especially when you throw in the proudly Russian Uncle Stepan.” Uncle Stepan is played by Jerzy Skolimowski, a filmmaker whom Cronenberg has long admired. Cronenberg reflects, “I was knocked out by the films Jerzy made in the Polish New Wave of the 1960s. During pre-production, I remembered that Jerzy had played a KGB agent in White Nights [1985] and that he was terrific in the role. We met up in London, and I was thrilled that he agreed to be in Eastern Promises. We ended up assembling an exciting and largely European cast. This was a particular thrill for me because the characters I do movies about tend not to be European. It was a whole new team to play with.”
Lantos reports, “I was thrilled to collaborate on a film with actors of such towering talent; they are all at the peak of their form in Eastern Promises. No matter how many times I’ve seen this movie, there are scenes in which their performances take my breath away.” Cassel remarks, “Working with David is a pleasure. Being familiar with his work, I was confident that he’d be good with actors. Of course he is. There’s a lot of freedom, but at the same time he’s completely precise with the screenplay. He’ll make the right joke at the right moment, but at the same time he’s definitely the one in charge on the set.” Lantos adds, “He’s always on schedule, always on budget, and always does what he says he will do—and extremely well. Working with David is effortless.” Skolimowski offers, “David is calmly sure of himself and at the same time, spreads a harmonious feeling on the set. Everything goes smoothly and rather fast. It’s like film sets should be; my own, unfortunately not.”
Russian Palette
While the cast, setting, and subject are indeed unique for a David Cronenberg film, the crew that convened to help bring the story to the screen is characterized by longtime creative collaborators whose associations with the director began years ago and are still going strong. One of those core artisans, production designer Carol Spier, began work on Eastern Promises early. She made preliminary trips from Toronto to London in order to determine shooting exteriors and then ascertain how they would influence her design of the interiors. Spier and Cronenberg have a long-established process of conferring on the backgrounds of the characters. For Eastern Promises, the concept for Spier’s design was to show two worlds co-existing in London. Spier notes, “We contrast Anna’s middle-class existence—the home where she lives with her mother and uncle, and the hospital where she works—with the more opulent crime world of Nikolai’s ‘family.'” The exterior of Whittington Hospital was an easy enough match for the story’s fictional hospital, but far more important was the Trans-Siberian restaurant; while the exterior is an empty building offering some visual texture and historical detail, Spier designed a lush interior. The upscale environment inside reflects both Semyon’s affection for his culture as well as his ill-gotten gains.
To get better familiarized with Russian architecture, Spier spent a long weekend in St. Petersburg visiting restaurants and the Hermitage. She reports, “It was at the Hermitage where I saw the opulence and details of Catherine the Great’s world. That became what Semyon was trying to put in his restaurant. I combined various elements and images, from lamps to paintings to moldings to pictures of food. Semyon didn’t come from that world; he’s trying very hard, so it’s just a little bit off, with a little too much kitsch thrown in. It’s whatever he thinks Catherine the Great might have done.” For the sequence revolving around an extended family holiday feast hosted by Semyon, food consultant Syvena Rowe, a specialist in Russian cuisine, was called in to prepare the meal. “It was like putting together a party,” laughs Spier. “The opulent banquet scene is a departure for David, whose films are normally more spare.” The director notes, “This spread certainly was sumptuous. It put me in mind of the one in Fellini’s Satyricon. Ours is not as opulent or decadent as that one, but while doing dolly shots past this fantastical food, I couldn’t help thinking of it… Syvena is a Bulgarian woman who specializes in Eastern European cooking and has written books on it. We welcomed the authenticity that she provided because food is very symbolic and emblematic of ‘the old country’ still alive in London. That was called for in Steve’s script. But when we first went looking for this subculture, we couldn’t find it because it’s not quite as cohesive as he has written it. As we started to do research, that subculture did rise close to the surface. It turns out that there are at least 10 very good Russian restaurants in London, though they’re not easy to find. Once we did, they in turn helped us locate Russians, Ukrainians, Albanians… the Soviet diaspora in London, basically, for extras work. We also found them through the Russian Orthodox Church.”
Cronenberg’s longtime costume designer Denise Cronenberg (who is his sister) examined dozens of photos of Russians, from prostitutes to waiters. While visiting Russian restaurants, she noted that turtlenecks and black leather were prevalent. “Black denotes power,” explains Denise Cronenberg. “We had Russian extras who came on the set, and they would be wearing black leather and we would take theirs off and put ours on because ours had a specific look. The Russian émigrés that I met told me that I was just like a Russian, because I paid in cash! For the feast sequence, I dressed the Russian guests elegantly, but added over-the-top jewelry. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Anna is not really thinking that much about what she wears because she has so much else on her mind. So the concept was to dress Naomi Watts very simply and have her wear the same clothes over and over. When not on duty in her hospital uniform, she mainly wears jeans and a waxed-cotton jacket—which is her other uniform, for riding her motorcycle.” Denise Cronenberg adds, “As Nikolai, Viggo Mortensen needed to be intimidating, yet there was a limitation because technically he is a chauffeur for the family. So the trick was to dress him in a suit and tie, dress shirt, coat and gloves, and smart sunglasses, all of which had convey that there is more to him. He would just absorb the character when he put the clothes on—even the shoes helped him get into it. Vincent Cassel as Kirill was the most difficult to costume, and ended up in black leather for most of the film. He dresses to show that he has money, but the black leather indicates his Russian background. We made his coats, because I couldn’t find what I wanted.”
Spier notes, “Color palette is key on just about every film I do with David. In Anna’s world, everything is simple and not colorful. You could say we did it as beige while not exactly being beige. With the crime family, it’s garishly opulent and also darker.” As is customary on a David Cronenberg movie, Spier coordinated efforts with Denise Cronenberg. The latter says, “We compared research that we’d assembled. David trusts Carol and I to coordinate on a look because we know what he would or wouldn’t like.” In addition to Spier and Denise Cronenberg, other key collaborators together again with David Cronenberg on Eastern Promises include cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, editor Ronald Sanders, Academy Award-winning make-up designer Stephan Dupuis, and Academy Award-winning composer Howard Shore. Robert Lantos reveals, “David’s brilliant nucleus of distinguished craftspeople will turn down all other offers whenever he makes a movie; their loyalty to him is a fantastic asset for a film and its producers.” Suschitzky notes, “The fact that we all know each other helps cut through a lot of the inessentials that go on in a production. We know what we’re each capable of doing, and that makes it a lot easier.”
Tattoo You
“Once Viggo Mortensen decides to take on a role, he’s completely into it and the greatest collaborator you can have,” remarks David Cronenberg. Naomi Watts adds, “Working with him was extraordinary. He was so into his character that I could tell he was upset to leave Nikolai behind!” Paul Webster reveals, “Viggo’s one-man research engine helped mold David’s thinking about the script—and fed into the script in a great way. It informed our whole process.” Particularly helpful to all, for an important story and visual element of Eastern Promises, was Alix Lambert’s documentary The Mark of Cain, which she had filmed in Russian prisons; Mortensen studied her book (among others) on the same subject, namely, criminal tattoos. This facet of Mortensen’s research became “a key pivot point for our approach to refining the script with Steve,” notes Cronenberg. “Viggo sent me books on Russian criminal tattoos which were filled with not just photos and diagrams but also texts about the meanings of tattoos. He also sent me The Mark of Cain. There’s this whole hidden world of symbolism that is immediately fascinating.”
Cronenberg in turn sent the books and the documentary to Knight, who incorporated the tattoo elements into the screenplay. Cronenberg says, “Tattoos suddenly became an intense metaphor and symbol in the movie. It’s a specialized world that is in fact dying because of the changes that have happened in Russia in the last decade. The tattoos are tied to an older Russian criminal caste with a real structure and hierarchy—the Vory V Zakone, which is literally translated as ‘Thieves in law.’ It’s a brotherhood of thieves. The old saying goes, ‘There is no honor among thieves,’ but what we found out was that the Vory has, if not honor, than at least a code that is adhered to—and it’s a very brutal one.” The director clarifies that “this really is quite different from the Mafia. Also, in the modern Russian world, or the diaspora in London, it’s morphing into something quite different, which is what we wanted to explore in Eastern Promises.” Vory V Zakone members include Russians and Georgians, and a smattering of Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Abkhazians, and—in the movie, at least—Turks. The Vory were born organically in Russia during the Great Terror of the 1930s, when Josef Stalin and his henchmen purged the Bolshevik Party of “enemies of the people” and sent millions to the Gulag slave labor camps in Siberia. It was in these camps that the first Vory were formed, along with the code that dictates law among Russian gangsters. The code calls for “complete submission to the laws of criminal life, including obligations to support the criminal ideal, and rejection of labor and political activities.” The Vory also organized their own tribunals to pass judgment on code violations and disputes. The penalty for violation of the code is often mutilation or death.
The Vory strengthened their ranks in the 1970s, during Leonid Brezhnev’s rule, as the Soviet economy began to stagnate and the black market for luxury goods thrived. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Vory further consolidated power in Russia, while also fanning out around the globe, particularly into Western Europe and the United States. Today, many Vory live well far from their home country. Estimates place them as operating in several dozen different countries, with thousands of members. The rigid code and behavioral rules, however, remain in place. The Vory‘s criminal aristocracy continues to oversee a recruitment system that, like 70 years ago, is concentrated in the prisons. “The criminals in Russian jails say that your tattoo is your life,” says Cronenberg. “Your tattoos on your body are who you are. If you come in with no tattoos, you don’t exist. They must be accurate; they tell what crimes you’ve committed, what jail time you’ve served, what your sexual orientation is, and more. If you were to have a tattoo that says you are higher up in the crime world than you are, you would be seriously punished, if not killed. It is said that tattoos are one’s passport, but it’s a very obscure country that the passport is from; the Russian criminal life is a rather small world. So the tattoos you’ve branded yourself with are determining your own fate, and are also your private passport to your private world.”
Knight adds, “They communicate through the tattoos. Basically, these people have their curriculum vitae on their body, their career history. With Nikolai, the question is, are these only on his skin? It’s what he’s done, but is it who he is?” Many tattoos are applied in prison. In these circumstances, to make the ink for the tattoos, prisoners break off the heel of a boot or a shoe and burn it. This yields soot that is sifted through a handkerchief and combined with urine to produce a durable ink. The tattoo is applied with a sharpened guitar string threaded through a wind-up shaver, while a grafted pen cap serves as the ink well. Charged with making it somewhat easier on all concerned for the tattoo sequence and shots in Eastern Promises, Carol Spier created a tattoo tool based on her staff’s research at the Oxford Tattoo Museum. However, hers was designed to not pierce the skin. The stars being tattooed on Nikolai’s knees in the key Vory sequence convey that he will never have to kneel down before authority, as he is raised to the highest rank in the brotherhood. It took one member of Stephan Dupuis’s staff 4 hours to apply 43 tattoos on Mortensen for the full-body tattoo sequence. The tattoos, which were transfers, ranged from fingernail-sized to one which covered most of the actor’s back. Several encircled his wrists, ankles, and fingers.
Keeping it all in the film family, as opposed to the crime family, Russian dialect coach Olegar Fedoro did double duty by appearing on-screen as the tattooist who works on Nikolai. “Viggo’s body was a canvas for me,” he reports. “Instead of a brush, I was using a little electric machine.” Among the 43 tattoos are Skull With Flowers, Smoking Skull, Tiger, Star, Virgin Mary with Child, Woman with Knife, Snake & Dagger, Scorpion, Sailing Ship, Naked Angel on a Wheel, Jesus, Grim Reaper, Hot Cross Button, Coppolas, Epaulettes, Crow, Cross, Cat with Pipe, Candelabra, Button, Barbed Wire, Ankle Chain, and the 7 assorted Finger Tattoos. 12 of the tattoos are Russian sayings. Mortensen notes, “Some of the tattoos were humorous, and some were quite poetic. On the instep of my right foot, one said ‘Where are you going?’ On the instep of the other foot, another said, ‘What the hell do you care?’ One of my favorites said, ‘Let all I have lived be as if it were a dream,’ which is so beautiful and sad. Another said, ‘I’m a slave to fate but no lackey to the law,’ which translates to, ‘I’ll accept my lot in life without complaining, but don’t expect me to show you any respect or listen to anything you say; I don’t care how hard you hit me.’ These tattoos tied in with the so-called honorable thief who has a complete lack of respect for authority, no matter where it’s coming from. There is, in the Vory, a respect for those who don’t respect authority. As crude as they can be, there is real attention to history and imagery. For example, the Ankle Chain ones refer back to the time of Peter the Great, when prisoners were commonly shackled by the ankles. The crucifix on my chest denotes that I am a thief in good standing; it has nothing to do with religion. The three church domes on my back represent three different prison sentences, while the St. Petersburg cross on my finger is a symbol for having been in a prison there.”
Mortensen’s in-character tattoos for Nikolai were so authentic-looking that when the actor visited a Russian restaurant, diners fell silent, thinking that a top Vory had entered. However, once he spoke English, many visibly relaxed… although, reveals Armin Mueller-Stahl, “I was told that some of them actually left.”
Another London
The recent polonium poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko brought world attention to the number of wealthy Russians now making their homes in London. In fact, during production of Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg and Vincent Cassel’s temporary homes were mere steps away from where traces of the poison were found as part of the investigation into Litvinenko’s death. But, in the immigrant tradition, the Russian subculture in London hasn’t seen the vast majority of its denizens settle into expensive centrally located residences. Instead, they have gravitated towards less expensive places on the outskirts of the city. Undiscovered by tourists, these communities have their own textures and history. As such, the production followed the screenplay’s lead by not shooting in the traditional London locales that are familiar on-screen. Cronenberg emphasizes, “We shot in places where the immigrants live, like in the East End. It brought us texture. Russia itself is not in great shape. So we captured locations in London with a sense of decay, which I’m partial to anyway. We tried to show where you could see the weight of the ages, which connects with Russia. There is a historical sense of a Russian past that flows through all the Russian characters, and a traditional Russian sadness and cynicism. That has not disappeared with modern Russia, although it’s mutated a bit.”
The director elaborates, “Viggo Mortensen and I were both reading Dostoevsky—as it turned out, the same book; Demons, a.k.a. The Possessed. Much of what’s written by that author permeated his portrayal of Nikolai. The combination of the texture of his voice and his face with the weathered streets and the dilapidated interiors gave us a strongly authentic foundation. With Carol Spier’s production design and the night shooting as lit by Peter Suschitzky’s camera, I felt we were able to get on-screen aspects of a film noir.”
Eastern Promises shot its interior sequences on sets built at 3 Mills Studios in East London. 3 Mills is a converted gin distillery. But the production was also frequently on the move, filming at different locations throughout the U.K. These included Kilburn, where an anonymous suburban setting doubled as a brothel; Woolwich, Greenwich, Southwark, Brompton Cemetery, Cannon Street, a Hackney housing estate, and Harlesden. Paul Webster remarks, “Harlesden is considered such a dangerous place that twenty security guards were on duty the night we were there, as well as four police officers; normally there would be four security guards and one police officer. So as not to attract attention, our production vehicles were hidden behind shops.” A safer location was Deptford, an area which traces its history dating back to the Middle Ages, and where Henry VIII built his Tudor fleet by the Thames in the 16th Century. There, the production filmed a body being dumped. As the Thames is a tidal river, rising between 10-12 yards as the tide ebbs and flows, the production had to time this scene with precision. The scene had to be shot when the tide was at its highest, and completed before the river ebbed, revealing mud flats.
The Thames Barrier, in the lower part of the tidal Thames, was used for where a body washes up. The Barrier is a series of ten separate movable gates positioned end-to-end 520 yards across the river to control floodwaters and stem the tide. The only real tourist destination that the production filmed at was the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the 18th Century. However, Sir Christopher’s beautiful columned buildings will not be seen on-screen; the location was selected for its kitchen, which doubled for the Trans-Siberian restaurant kitchen. When not playing scenes in the kitchen, Armin Mueller-Stahl took the opportunity to see the city. “London is very, very exciting,” he enthuses. “Also, I’m a painter myself, so I went to see Cézanne and Hockney works at the museums.”
Webster comments, “Eastern Promises should offer a real sense of what London is these days; a multicultural cosmopolitan city. Everywhere you turn, there is the old bumping up against the new, which is so appropriate for our story.” Knight adds, “There are hundreds of different languages spoken in our city, and there are several different languages spoken in our film. The variety of locations reflect that, and also show the diversity of London life, the way it is now.” To ensure that words were being pronounced and/or with an accurate accent, three dialogue/dialect coaches were employed by the production. On the set, the trio all listened intently through their earphones during each take. Russian dialect coach Olegar Fedoro checked authenticity constantly and monitored Mortensen closely. Fedoro says, “My goal was that when people in Moscow see this film, they say, ‘I didn’t know he was Russian.’ We began preparing when Viggo came back from Russia, where he was very inspired. He’s a stronger linguist than most actors.”
While dialogue coach Andrew Jack also advised on the Russian accents, he mostly concentrated on making sure that actors spoke English with an appropriate Eastern European accent. Extra effort was required by and with Vincent Cassel (who is French) and Mueller-Stahl (who grew up in East Berlin) in particular. Even Naomi Watts’s English accent had to be refined, since the English-born actress was raised in Australia. Rounding out the linguistic chaperones was Esin Harvey, who was a Turkish dialogue advisor. She worked with the actors who play members of the rival crime family, seen initially in the opening sequence and later figuring into the plot. Jack explains, “We had to make a demarcation on this particular movie as to who was dealing with dialect and who was dealing with dialogue. Olegar and Esin dealt more with language. We all aimed for a lot of subtleties that kept these characters believable.”
Promises Kept
David Cronenberg sees the finished film as “a mob crime thriller intricately interwoven with familial dramas—all unfolding in a subculture that dwells within another very strong culture.” Paul Webster notes, “The emotional triangle between Anna, Nikolai, and Kirill intrigued me in Steve Knight’s script, and even more so with what our actors brought to it. David also caught all the drama of a man who is willing to sacrifice everything for his work, and the pressures that brings; Viggo Mortensen’s character makes a kind of Faustian bargain. From these diverse elements, David mines all dramatic and thriller excitement.” Mortensen offers, “I consider myself very fortunate to have done two movies in a row with David. I think that with this movie, we explored language a little more, whereas in A History of Violence it was gesture that took precedence. Eastern Promises is a logical follow-up to A History of Violence; there are identity issues, explorations of the traditional family structure, people dealing with perilous situations and moral dilemmas, and the question ‘Is violence ever justified?'”
Viggo Mortensen and David Cronenberg appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air in 2007. Topics included Viggo’s Russian accent, the tattoos, how to best photograph blood, and of course the steam bath scene in which a naked Mortensen fights several assailants.
Guillermo del Toro on Eastern Promises.
THE MAKING OF THE ‘EASTERN PROMISES’ NAKED FIGHT SCENE
Tim Grierson spoke to crewmembers on the Viggo Mortensen crime thriller to hear about the actor’s dedication, his bruises, and his willingness to go balls out.
In the words of David Cronenberg:
“One of the problems with [shooting] that scene was always going to be nudity. Having to be careful of nudity would have been a big problem. If Viggo had been the kind of actor who was worried about being dignified or vulnerable, I would have had to try to shoot the scene with what, him wearing his towel all the way through? Or, from the waist up? Fortunately, Viggo is pretty fearless, and he said, immediately, ‘I’ve got to do it nude.’ It came down to a matter of trust between us, and because we had developed that trust on A History of Violence, I didn’t have to worry then about [him being uncomfortable being nude on camera]. For me, then, the first thing about a fight scene like this one was the space—where would it be happening? Carol Spier, the production designer, and I found this wonderful steam bath location, but then just after we found it they renovated it and completely destroyed all the old textures—the old tiles, leaky pipes and rusty stuff that gave it such great visual appeal. So, we had to build [the steam bath] on a stage. The first thing I did with Carol was to make sure the spaces offered a lot of possibilities for interesting angles, lighting and the flow of action.
Once I had the model for the set then I talked to the stunt coordinator [Julian Spencer] who was going to work with the three actors involved. We never used stunt doubles, by the way. He worked only with Viggo and the actors who played the two Chechens and no one else. I said [to the stunt coordinator], ‘Here’s where this scene will start—I’m going to leave this character here in the previous scene, and then I want [the fight] to flow through here and use this area over there and end here.’ And then he worked out with the actors exactly what the fight would be. They’d rehearse in a rehearsal hall with the set marked on the floor with tape. Every week I’d come in and they would show me what they had developed. And I’d say, ‘Well, that’s a bit corny, this a bit unbelievable, try this, and how about that?’ And, ‘Remember that book we read about Russians who were trained in that commando killing technique?’ We posited that this character of Viggo’s might have received that kind of training and therefore could do those moves. And it gradually developed.
One of the questions the stunt coordinator asked initially was, how was I going to shoot the scene? Was it going to be quick, impressionistic cutting like in the Bourne movies, where you don’t really see anything or know what you’ve seen, or was it going to be more like A History of Violence where you can see everything and it is much more, what I would call, realistic? You can justify all those different ways of shooting an action scene, but basically it’s a subjective, intuitive thing. It’s a feel. My philosophy is that the pleasure of any movie is that the audience gets to live in a safe way the life of somebody else, and so I wanted the audience to feel that they were there, that they were in this fight. That to me mean means not quick impressionistic cutting but a kind of realistic flow that is physically grounded in the body. Once the stunt coordinator knew that, he knew that everything he had the actors do had to be credible, had to be something that could really happen. There could be no quick cutaways or swish pans where you wouldn’t know what’s going on. And all of these things came together when we shot the scene, which took us three days.” —David Cronenberg
Stunt coordinator Julian Spencer explains how he choreographed Viggo Mortensen’s naked fight scene in Eastern Promises.
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Julian Spencer has been doing stunts for 18 years, the last seven of which he served as a stunt coordinator on such films as Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Dirty Pretty Things. For Eastern Promises, he was given a number of fight scenes, the most complex being the ambush of a naked Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) by a couple of Chechen thugs out for revenge in a Russian bathhouse.
It can’t be easy choreographing a fight with a naked man?
No, not at all. We had to spend time with the construction and art department going over the space’s design and how it interacted with the fight so I could say early on, “I want that corner padded and that corner…” But there was a limited area where I could put padded tiles. And with Viggo being naked, he had no protection whatsoever. One of the Chechens in the film was a 6’5″ guy, who’ve I worked with before, and he told me he was not going to hold back on the fight sequences. And he wasn’t kidding.
Nakedness aside, how do you creatively choreograph a scene like this?
You start with characters. Cronenberg described the characters and why the Chechens were coming after Viggo, and so we started with that. And I knew that it was going to end up being a bloody mess. In scenes like this, I worry about over choreographing, because then it starts to look staged.
How violent did it get?
They went all out. Initially we talked about the moves and rehearsed them in very slow motion. But in the action, I let the characters’ physical strengths come out. There was a lot of hitting at the face and diving over onto tiles. [Viggo] was supposed to land on the rubber tiles, but often flew right past them.
Ouch! Did you need to worry about exposing too much of Viggo to the camera?
You can’t get away from that. He gets picked up off the floor and thrown to the other side of the room. And doing master shots of this, things were going to be revealed–but very quickly and in a tasteful way. If you tried to cover that up, it would have shown through in the fight.
What makes a fight realistic for you?
When it fits the story. Viggo wasn’t some Rambo who could cut anyone to shreds. This was a real man fighting for his life.
In an interview with Cinema Daily, Mortensen described how he prepared for the bathhouse scene, which included adding hand-to-hand fighting techniques he learned in a military manual while in Russia. Then he sought assistance from the actors he worked with in the scene, David Papava and Tamer Hassan, both of whom were accomplished stuntmen with training in several combat styles. The addition of a military fighting technique added to the scene’s credibility, as did Mortensen’s commitment to making it appear as realistic as possible.
“When I was in Russia, I also found in a used bookshop, this manual, military manual with photos of hand to hand fighting tactics. And I showed this book to one of the guys was in that fight. There were two Chechen people. What the actors were actually a guy from Georgia country, not the United States, who had been in the Russian military. And he said, oh yeah, yeah, these are things we trained in. So we incorporated some of those moves into the fight, and the other guy was a Turkish origin, a heavyweight boxer. And they were both really good stuntman and an actor. So it made that fight much more realistic, I guess. But we worked hard on the choreography and I knew as we were preparing that, it was going to be painful. It was going to be uncomfortable. And the nudity was really, it just made sense. I mean, your towel is not going to stay on fight like that. So it didn’t really think about that. It was more being really focused on not to get hurt obviously, but also the bruises to be able to complete the fight successfully and to have it look real and original.
We worked really hard on that choreography and David was quite efficient with Peter Suschitzky, his cinematographer. They did a great job planning how to shoot that scene. And I thought we were done in one day, which would have been great, but they said, we need a couple close-ups of some things, so we’ll do that tomorrow. And when I came in the next day, you know, it was a process putting these tattoos on or touching them up, took a while we got it down to 45 minutes, maybe an hour, whereas it had been a couple hours at first, but then it took another hour, at least that morning to also cover all the bruises from the day before, because all those landings on the floor and all that. But other than that, when you know it was going to be uncomfortable, but that was part of what would make it.” —Viggo Mortensen
Marked for Life concentrates on the more physical aspect of the art of tattooing. Actor Viggo Mortensen explains some of his art and the meaning behind it.
This brief featurette includes interviews with Cronenberg, Knight, Mortensen, Watts, Mueller-Stahl, and others, along with some on-set video and some brief clips from the film.
PETER SUSCHITZKY, ASC
Peter Suschitzky, ASC (born 25 July 1941) is a British cinematographer and photographer. Among his most known works as director of photography are The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Empire Strikes Back, and Mars Attacks!, as well as the later films of David Cronenberg. Suschitzky succeeded Mark Irwin as Cronenberg’s regular cinematographer when Irwin left during the pre-production of Dead Ringers (1988) and has been the cinematographer for all of Cronenberg’s films since, with the exception of Crimes of the Future (2022). He has also collaborated with directors John Boorman, Ken Russell, Bernard Rose, and Tim Burton.
Roger Deakins and James Deakins sit down with cinematographer Peter Suschitzky for a great conversation. We learn that Peter started shooting at a very young age and was printing images in the darkroom at the age of 6! Peter tells stories from working with the great directors John Boorman, Peter Watkins, and David Cronenberg. Peter talks about interviewing with George Lucas for Star Wars, why he hadn’t seen a single one of Cronenberg’s films before his interview for Dead Ringers, and his collaborations with Peter Watkins. Peter believes it is easy to fall into formulaic filmmaking if you work too much, and to him that is the enemy of creativity.
“The only long relationship I really had was with David Cronenberg. I shot two films with John Boorman but they were separated by 20 years, so it wasn’t exactly a marriage. Whereas with David Cronenberg it was very much a professional marriage. It was a wonderful opportunity to develop a relationship with him and shoot so many films together. Each one presented a different challenge. Each was quite different from the previous one. I found them all very stimulating to work on. For me, the key is to be stimulated by the project regardless of whether it’s going to be successful or not. I’m a firm believer in the importance of the context of what we cinematographers do. I think it’s pointless to think that you can do beautiful work on a bad film. Perhaps you can do good work on a bad film but it’s not going to have much meaning. Whereas if you do quite good work, maybe not great work, on a really good film, people will think you’re great and at the same time you’ll be stimulated. Actually I’ve found that I’ve done my best work on the most challenging films. Films which have been most stimulating to work on.” —Peter Suschitzky
David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen discuss their working relationship, which has now spanned three films together (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method).
CRONENBERG ON CRONENBERG
Cronenberg on Cronenberg, a career-length interview in book form edited by the filmmaker Chris Rodley and published by Faber & Faber, offers the definitive analysis of Cronenberg’s work through the words of the man himself. The following are but a selection of extracts.
Cronenberg on being an auteur director
“At a certain point I realized that what I liked about the classic filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s, like Bergman and Fellini, was that you entered a world of their own creation when you went to see their films. That world was consistent from film to film. There was a tone, a feeling, and dynamics that were consistently at work. It wasn’t really conscious on my part that I should do the same, but I started to notice that what I was doing was also creating a world that had its own very specific dynamic. That’s scary, because on the one hand I could say, ‘Well, that’s what a serious filmmaker should do,’ but on the other hand it worries you because if it comes to be expected of you it can be a trap. You worry that a film will be rejected, or won’t fit the pattern. It’s not unlike a child. I see it in how obsessive children can become. When a kid’s turned into a cat, if you try to relate to him as your son—disaster. Emotional psychic disaster. You’ve crossed the line. You’ve done wrong. Don’t underestimate the seriousness of play; the necessity to have that fantasy. For me, it’s the reason for returning again and again to certain themes. The thing that would not die, you know: disintegration, ageing, death, separation, the meaning of life…”
Cronenberg on the shocking force of his films
“I’m presenting audiences with imagery and with possibilities that have to be shown. There is no other way to do it. It’s not done for shock value. I haven’t made a single film that hasn’t surprised me in terms of audience response; they have been moved, shocked or touched by things that I thought wouldn’t nudge them one inch. For me, it’s really a question of conceptual imagery. It’s not just ‘Let’s show someone killing a pig on screen and we’ll get a good reaction.’ You would. So what? I don’t know where these extreme images come from. It seems very straightforward and natural and obvious to me as it happens. Often they come from the philosophical imperative of a narrative and therefore lead me to certain things that are demanded by the film. I don’t impose them. The film or the script itself demands a certain image, a certain moment in the film, dramatically. And it emerges. It’s like the philosophy of Emergent Evolution, which says that certain unpredictable peaks emerge from the natural flow of things and carry you forward to another stage. I guess each film has its own version of Emergent Evolution. It’s just like plugging into a wall socket. You look around for the plug point and, when you find it, the electricity is there–assuming that the powerhouse is still working…”
Cronenberg on the reasons for making art
“Catharsis is the basis of all art. This is particularly true of horror films, because horror is so close to what’s primal. We all prepare ourselves for challenges that we can anticipate. It’s only when cultural imperatives require that we avoid the discussion of things like death and ageing that the impulse is suppressed. Humans naturally prepare themselves to meet those kinds of challenges. Certainly ageing and death are two of those things. One of the ways man has always done this is through art. I’m not a big fan of the therapy value of art, in the psychotherapeutic use of art, because it’s devalued. It’s like Freud psychoanalysing Shakespeare by looking at Hamlet. But I think on a very straightforward level it’s true that any artist is trying to take control of life by organizing it and shaping it and recreating it. Because he knows very well that the real version of life is beyond his control.”
Cronenberg on his modus operandi
“People say, ‘What are you trying to do with your movies?’ I say, ‘Imagine you’ve drilled a hole in your forehead and that what you dream is projected directly on to a screen.’ Then they say, ‘Gee, but you’re weird. How can you do that strange stuff?’ I can they say, ‘You would do the same if you had access, if you allowed yourself access.’ Everybody would have weird stuff up there that an audience might think antisocial, perverse, whatever. It might even look that way to the person who created it. That’s not just your imagination up there; it’s a huge synthesis of things. ‘He’s got a weird imagination’ trivialises it and says it’s just a little arabesque. Nothing serious. Not the real person. Not the essence. But I think it is the essence of the person. Maybe the exercise is to deliver an essential part of you that cannot be delivered in any other way.”
Cronenberg on the artist’s duty to society
“Society and art exist uneasily together; that’s always been the case. If art is anti-repression, then art and civilization were not meant for each other. You don’t have to be a Freudian to see that. The pressure in the unconscious, the voltage, is to be heard, to express. It’s irrepressible. It will come out in some way. As an artist, one is not a citizen of society. An artist is bound to explore every aspect of human experience, the darkest corners—not necessarily—but if that is where one is led, that’s where one must go. You cannot worry about what the structure of your own particular segment of society considers bad behaviour, good behaviour; good exploration, bad exploration. So, at the time you’re being an artist, you’re not a citizen. You don’t have the social responsibility of a citizen. You have, in fact, no social responsibility whatsoever. When I write, I must not censor my own imagery or connections. I must not worry about what critics will say, what leftists will say, what environmentalists will say. I must ignore all that. If I listen to all those voices I will be paralysed, because none of this can be resolved. I have to go back to the voice that spoke before all these structures were imposed on it, and let it speak these terrible truths. By being irresponsible I will be responsible.”
Cronenberg on God and Man
“I’ve never been religious in the sense that I felt there was a God, that there was an external structure, universal and cosmic, that was imposed on human beings. I always really did feel—at first not consciously and then quite consciously—that we have created our own universe. Therefore, what is wrong with it also comes from us. Jaws seemed to scare a lot of people. But the idea that you carry the seeds of your own destruction around with you, always, and that they can erupt at any time, is more scary. Because there is no defense against it; there is no escape from it. You need a certain self-awareness to appreciate the threat. A young child can understand a monster jumping out of a closet, but it takes a little more—not really beyond most children, in fact—to understand there is an inner life to a human being that can be as dangerous as any animal in the forest.”
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. Photographed by Peter Mountain, Giles Keyte © Focus Features, BBC Film, Téléfilm Canada. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.
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