Mortenson and Cronenberg Go Gangster Again

The interrogation of Viggo Mortenson by some fishy-eyed (and deadly) Russian Mafiosi in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises is one of those cinema moments that in music would be called "aleatory"--"Using sounds chosen by the performer or left to chance". That performer, for us and the mobsters of Vory V Zakone ("Thieves in Law") is Mortenson, and thanks to the actor's deep immersion in the part, he convincingly calls the tune--at terrible risk but using the fear as a weapon, his Nikolai Luzhin takes the high ground away from the bosses. At a stage where the Toronto Film festival is winding down with certain Oscar hopefuls already left in the cold, Mortenson's work has people asking if a film from the there-will-be-blood master Cronenberg could win its leading man that kind of recognition (although William Hurt got a supporting actor Oscar nomination for just a few minutes' work in A History of Violence), even with the awards-savvy Focus Features behind it.

Amid an impeccable ensemble--the always credible and riveting Naomi Watts (her mother is played by Sinead Cusack, her uncle by Jerzy Skolimowski), the quietly sinister Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vincent Cassell showing just how much scenery you can wreck without actually eating any--Mortenson's Nikolai is the still center. Still that is, until people make the mistake of confronting him physically, including a balls-out (quite literally) brawl that's already a shopworn festival topic.

Much will be made of Mortenson's immersion; suffice it to say that Cronenberg is correct in saying the actor "played two characters, really, in [their 2005 collaboration on] A History of Violence, and I saw traces of neither one of them in his portrayal of Nikolai." (That said, we learn things about his character that ultimately, as in the earlier film, make his stoicism seem all the more remarkable.)

"It's a black piece of work, this story," says Mueller-Stahl, and he might have added blue. Among the 43 tattoos Mortenson sports, explains the film's production notes, 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. Mortenson, who traveled extensively in Russia to research the part --"with a lot of very disreputable Russian people", says screenwriter (Dirty Pretty Things) Stephen Knight), especially noted one of the latter, and his performance fully lives up to the inspiration: "One of my favorites said, 'Let all I have lived be as if it were a dream,' which is so beautiful and sad."