It's not like watching a movie. I almost forgot it's a story with an artificial beginning, middle, and end. It's almost like peeking in on a world I know nothing about for a few days. You see the story unfold from two points of view: Viggo Mortensen's character and Naomi Watts's character.
If you don't know the basic plot, here it is: An innocuous late night appt at the barber's turns Sweeney Todd. A teenage girl shows up late night at a pharmacy asking for help. She collapses in a pool of blood on the floor. Rushed to the hospital, she gives birth to a girl and then dies from her wounds. The midwife (Naomi Watts) spends the rest of the movie trying to understand a Russian diary the girl had in her purse, in an effort to locate the baby's relatives.The diary becomes a Macguffin, a plot device used to propel an ordinary character into extraordinary circumstances. In the diary, she finds a business card for a Russian restaurant and goes there in hopes of finding someone who might recognize the girl. She meets the owner, a seeming grandfatherly type, who enjoys making borscht, doting on his granddaughters, and catering private parties for the Russian community in London. She also meets the older gentleman's driver, Viggo Mortensen, who has just gotten rid of the barber's unfortunate client. This involved a freezer, chopped fingers, and a dunk in the Thames.
Viggo has his own trajectory. He's a man on the way up, as evidenced by all his tattoos. He's the quintessential enforcer: quiet, discreet, efficient. Every time they cross paths, he entreats her to stay away for her own protection.
That's the straight forward story. I read one reviewer who said that no one in this film is as they appear. And that's true. Everybody has another layer of identity that they each have to hold back in order to make their immigrant lives work.
What's in the diary? Who is the baby's father? Where does she belong? What is Naomi Watt's background? Viggo's? Why does he have all those tattoos?
Two other aspects give me the feeling of not watching a movie. One is London itself. I've never been there. But this movie's landscape uses none of the usual visual shorthand for London that I recognize from countless other movies and TV shows. It's all close-knit neighborhoods, low lying buildings, and tenements. The only thing recognizable is the rain. The other thing is the look of the film. Old fashioned film. I get the sensation of watching an old 60 minutes episode.
It's true that this is a violent film. If you don't like that, then stay away. It's brutal and somewhat gorey, but not gratuitous in the same way as The Matrix is. Each act of violence propels the story forward. In fact, i don't see anything extraneous about this movie. Even at three hours, if you cut anything, you'd definitely miss something in the development of the story. The (in)famous nude Viggo fight scene is oddly discrete in the choreography of it, but still intense in a way that few other movie moments are. I hope to see more moments like this. And, yeah, I noticed Viggo Mortensen has almost no body fat. :P :loveya:
Man, I might have to go see it again to get my mind around it.
edit: Here's the link.
http://www.focusfeatures.com/easternpromises/
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