Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg, UK/Canada, 2007)
Dir. David Cronenberg; starring Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen
David Cronenberg is like fine wine: he gets better with age. His early genius saw his anger and obsession portrayed in his body images and visual dysfunctions of human life. His films (which became known as the sub-genre Body Horror) had at their core sexual frustration and experimentation, a bleak but open look on the future of life as we know it, and the type of edgy, youthful angst and creative freedom only available to young, up-start directors untainted by the Hollywood machine.
Indeed, Cronenberg throughout his career, would steer clear of Hollywood intervention - both financially and geographically. His films have remained low-budget and financed by independent production companies. And he's shot many of them away from the allures of Los Angeles: predominantly staying in his homeland Canada or more recently shooting in England.
His early work was graphic and affecting. Many remember the exploding head in Scanners, the worm-like rape in the bath tub in Shivers, or James Woods pulling a gun out of his stomach in Videodrome. Cronenberg films were unique: they simultaneously examined our worst fears and our most rampant desires. He gave the horror film world depth largely unseen before, while developing a niche for his own whim to discover over the following years.
But, like most youthful endeavours, Cronenberg was still learning to hone his craft in films like Shivers, Rabid, and Scanners. Videodrome was littered with great moments, while The Brood showed the director had style to go with his ideas. It wasn't until 1986's The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, that he hit the mainstream. The Fly, which married Cronenberg's inherent fascination with the disfigurement of the human body and a bigger budget and recognised actors, put the director firmly in the minds of not only horror aficionados but movie-lovers of all kinds.
Yet I've always felt, aside from the brilliant Dead Ringers (arguably his best film) in 1988, he hasn't always found a way for his characters to fully blossom amongst his more prevalent themes and symbolism. This was down to an inability to coax the best performances out of his actors, but this was more easily rectified when he began employing more experienced performers. It was a problem with his early films and has affected later films too. However, recently, with Spider, A History of Violence and Eastern...
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