The Fine Brothers Again Why the Hell Are There Remakes
BLOOD BROTHERS
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David Cronenberg'south new film, "Eastern Promises," is his 2d in a row with Viggo Mortensen - is this the next swell actor-director pairing? Peradventure and then, given the overwhelming disquisitional praise for their starting time collaboration, "A History of Violence" (2005).
In that picture, Mortensen played an amiable married homo with a hidden, ultra-violent past. His new grapheme also has a penchant for mayhem - he'southward a fellow member of the Russian mafia in London, eager to show he'southward a loyal soldier. This roughshod figure seems a far weep from the actor'due south best-known function, the heroic Aragorn in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
An even more radical departure from Tolkien'southward fantasy earth is the new film'southward extended fight scene in a bathhouse. Mortensen's graphic symbol quickly loses the towel around his waist and is left without so much as a fig leaf to hibernate behind. This mixture of os-crunching combat and eroticism is pure Cronenberg - the director has said that sex activity and violence "go together like bacon and eggs."
Though he's made various kinds of films, Cronenberg is all-time known as the practitioner of a genre called "body horror." The term is shorthand for his fascination, in films like "Scanners," "Videodrome" and "The Fly," with frightening mutations, transformations and disfigurements of the human trunk, frequently linked to engineering science.
"Eastern Promises" is a thriller, just it connects with the body-horror theme in its focus on Russian prison tattoos. The underworld seen in the motion picture is based on a existent grouping, vory v zakone ("thieves-in-police"), a criminal brotherhood built-in in gulags and jails. Members adhere to a strict lawmaking and bear highly wrought tattoos that tell their outlaw status and their criminal history - in prison, these are matters of life and death. Information technology was Mortensen, known for painstakingly researching his roles, who brought the tattooing to the filmmaker'south attention.
Cronenberg and Mortensen were in San Francisco recently to talk most "Eastern Promises."
Q: Do you 2 accept a De Niro-Scorsese relationship?
Cronenberg: Well, their human relationship is a long-, long-term one, and also, they came from the same place. But, weirdly enough, Viggo and I have come from another planet together. I do feel nosotros're brothers under the skin. But at that place's no reason for that to be the case.
MORTENSEN: The connection we made working the first fourth dimension, it felt right. We did a lot of preparation, and when y'all become to the set, yous find (the two of you lot have) developed a kind of shorthand. I felt like I was in skillful hands and that, if I wanted to try something, it was sure not to exist taken as an barb. I find (David) to be very secure equally a person and an artist.
Q: Viggo's elaborate tattoos in "Eastern Promises" seem like a key to the movie.
CRONENBERG: Ironically, when I agreed to do this script, it (the tattoo theme) was almost nonexistent. (Viggo'southward) really the dog that brought that back in his mouth. I said to Steve Knight, the writer of the script, "I'yard going to send you this stuff (about tattoos). It's going to blow your mind, because really it'southward sort of the central metaphor of the movie." The script had almost been waiting for that, and we never had it, and information technology really did crystallize so much. (The tattoos) were a fantastic metaphor and very heady to discover. They're a key to the circuitous sociology of the vory v zakone.
Q: Viggo, yous studied Russian and learned almost the Russian criminal world to prepare for the part, and yous've said there's a scary border in the gangsters' Russian dialogue. (Note: Most of the dialogue is in English but scenes with Russian spoken language take subtitles.)
MORTENSEN: What'south spoken in the film is a certain kind of Russian, a kind of slang that has humor and double entendres that interpret roughly well into English, just not entirely. There are picayune asides and trivial jokes, like the scene when we're throwing the body in the river. What (the Russian dialogue) sounds like, and what information technology's actually saying in Russian, is a little funnier and a little more horrible (than the subtitles indicate). I mean, the average Russian hears this and goes, "Oh!"
Q: The nude fight scene is bound to get people talking.
MORTENSEN: I was enlightened, every bit was David, that people will perchance focus a lilliputian fleck on that, and certainly practise screen grabs or whatever they do. You can't practice anything about information technology. (The idea was) let's effigy out the best way to brand the fight believable. And I like the way David shot information technology. It feels realistic. Information technology's not disguised or smoothed over with photographic camera work or glamorizing the body. It's pretty horrible.
CRONENBERG: Most times an actor does a nude scene, it'southward about sex. In this case, it's about vulnerability.
Q: Is there a subterranean connexion between Viggo's vigorous sexual activity scene with Maria Bello in "A History of Violence" and the nude fight in "Eastern Promises"?
MORTENSEN: Karmically, there's a real stiff connexion because (in "Eastern Promise") obviously I'm getting my retribution from Maria Bello.
CRONENBERG: She was the one who got bruised in "A History of Violence," and (Viggo) got bruised in "Eastern Promises." If you played those scenes side by side, information technology would be pretty interesting. You'd first to meet there'south a weirdly erotic element in the fight scene and there'due south a weirdly mortal assault in the scene on the stairs (with Bello) equally well.
MORTENSEN: The problem is that the people I have those nude scenes with either leave or dice. It's not a very romantic illusion.
CRONENBERG: Well, that'south your own personal karma.
Q: Viggo, have you been trying to distance yourself from "The Lord of the Rings"?
MORTENSEN: No. There are actors who, alone or with the help of other people - image consultants or whatever you desire to telephone call them - endeavor to craft an epitome of themselves. Audiences might buy it for a petty while, simply eventually they'll think what they're going to think. If I was worried almost people only thinking I was Aragorn, there's not much I could practice nigh it, and I frankly don't care. What I retrieve most "The Lord of the Rings," other than memories I have of friendships and whatever I learned in doing inquiry for the pic, is that basically it's a skilful thing information technology did and then well. Without that, I wouldn't be sitting hither, I wouldn't have gotten to do "A History of Violence" or "Eastern Promises." No studio would have backed the thought, fifty-fifty if David had known me and thought I was right for both parts.
Q: David, accept yous quit doing horror films?
CRONENBERG: I don't really feel I've distanced myself from horror films. I would say that "eXistenZ," which is a sci-fi film, certainly had horror elements, and information technology was not that long ago (1999). And then I don't experience I'yard turning my back on the genre. It's but that I'm interested in doing new stuff for me. But it doesn't mean I wouldn't immediately exercise a horror moving picture if in that location was something new near it.
Q: A lot of the horror classics of the '70s, like "The Hills Accept Eyes," are being remade. David, take yous been approached most your early picture due south?
CRONENBERG: Some people have asked me to remake "Shivers," "Rabid," "The Brood," "Videodrome." Information technology'southward just non interesting to me. What's more than, I often get scripts that are obvious rip-offs (of my own movies). About two weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to my agent saying, "I did this movie 35 years ago, and when I did information technology, it was the first time. And so why should I do it once again?" At the moment, some people are seriously talking about doing a remake of "Scanners." I don't really want to be involved, other than that I hope they'll pay me some money.
Q: I heard in that location's going to be an opera version of "The Wing."
CRONENBERG: There are a lot of picture show directors who accept been doing opera. William Friedkin is doing it, and I've heard Woody Allen is doing one (Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi"). Information technology'due south not so foreign when you consider that the people on the cut border of the opera globe are working with a fixed repertoire, and you tin get pretty bored doing "La Boheme" for the eight,000th time. Plus, they really worry near the aging opera audience, and to go a new audience you really have to reinvent the class. The difference (with "The Fly" opera) from what Woody's doing is that it's based on my own film. I don't know if that'southward happened before.
Q: So what's going to be the adjacent Cronenberg-Mortensen pic?
CRONENBERG: We really don't know. I hateful, (Viggo) works a lot, and I get very jealous. He works with other directors, simply I'll only work with him. So he's the slut in the human relationship.
"Eastern Promises" (R) opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.
The fine art of prison house tattoos
More information on Russian prison tattoos is bachelor in 2 books and a pic: "Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia Volume II" by Alexei Pluster-Sarno, Danzig Baldaev, Anne Applebaum and Sergey Vasiliev; "Russian Prison house Tattoos: Codes of Potency, Domination and Struggle" by Alix Lambert; and Lambert's feature-length documentary, "The Mark of Cain."
- Walter Addiego
Source: https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/BLOOD-BROTHERS-2505046.php
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