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Senhores do Crime - David Cronenberg


Kate Ryan
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Eastern Promises   - Eastern Promises  (2007)

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Informações Técnicas

Estúdio: Focus Features (Distribuição, Produção); BBC Films, Kudos Films (Produção)

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Elenco: Viggo Mortensen

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Equipe Técnica: David Cronenberg (Diretor); Steve Knight (Roteirista); Paul Webster (Produtor)

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Sinopse: Uma enfermeira decide investigar a identidade de uma misteriosa jovem russa que morreu durante o parto na noite de Natal. Quando ela descobre que a garota era uma prostituta envolvida com uma gangue de tráfico sexual, sua vida passa a correr perigo.

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Estréia: A definir.

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Data da primeira notícia: 15/02/2006:

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Data da última notícia: 25/04/2006:

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Notícias da Produção

25/04/2006:

 

mortensenviggo.jpg(07:46) Viggo Mortensen (foto) vai voltar a trabalhar com David Cronenberg, seu diretor em Marcas da Violência. Segundo a Variety, o ator foi escalado para Eastern Promises, um dos próximos projetos do cineasta. Desta vez, porém, Mortensen não será o protagonista: seu papel será o de um homem que se envolve com a máfia russa.

 

Cronenberg afirmou no mês passado que Maps to the Stars é sua prioridade no momento. Sendo assim, parece que Eastern Promises será feito em seguida.

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15/02/2006:

 

(14:26) David Cronenberg (Marcas da Violência) tem mais um projeto em vista. Junto com Maps to the Stars, o diretor vai trabalhar em Eastern Promises, thriller escrito por Steve Knight (Coisas Belas e Sujas).

 

Com um orçamento entre US$ 15 milhões e US$ 20 milhões, este será o segundo filme britânico do cineasta (o primeiro foi Spider – Desafie Sua Mente, de 2002).

 

A trama é sobre uma enfermeira que decide investigar a identidade de uma jovem russa que morreu durante o parto na noite de Natal. Sua vida passa a correr perigo quando ela descobre que a garota era uma prostituta envolvida com uma gangue de tráfico sexual.

 

De acordo com a Variety, Cronenberg e Knight já estão trabalhando no roteiro e pretendem filmar a partir de setembro. Isto, no entanto, vai depender de quando o projeto estará pronto para entrar em produção. Só então, Cronenberg decidirá qual será feito primeiro: Eastern Promises ou Maps to the Stars.

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http://www.cinemaemcena.com.br/not_cinenews_filme.asp?cod=51 64

Big One2006-09-29 11:37:57
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September/October 2007

 

 

 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: David Cronenberg talks about his strangely intimate new Russian mafia movie Eastern Promises and snuff films on the Internet

 

by Amy Taubin

 

 

 

Cronenberg.jpg

 

 

 

Set in London within the ritualized underworld of the Russian mafia—the dread vory v zakone—David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises couldn’t be further, in terms of ambience, from the Americana of A History of Violence;

and yet the two films are bonded, first by the enigmatic presence of

Viggo Mortensen, once again playing a character with a mysterious past,

and by the eroticized violence that is the currency of Cronenbergian

male relationships.

 

 

Floating intermittently above the film is the voice of a 14-year-old

Russian girl who, lured to London and imprisoned in a mafia whorehouse,

hemorrhages to death in childbirth. A hospital midwife (Naomi Watts)

finds the dead girl’s diary, which leads her to the red-plush

restaurant that is the mafia’s front. Watts’s character opens the door

to this illicit world but she remains an outsider, hovering at the

periphery of the narrative. Cronenberg, however, with a mastery of film

space that now seems like second nature to him, ushers us deep inside,

placing us in intimate proximity to the casual barbarism of everyday

life among thieves and murderers. The film builds to an extraordinary

action sequence, a ballet of butchery choreographed for a trio of

performers and set in the theater of a Russian steam bath.

 

 

Although the version of the film I saw in July was unfinished

(Cronenberg was still mixing the sound at the time of the interview

below), it left me literally shaking but also feeling that I now

possessed secret knowledge. And knowledge, no matter how terrible, is

power.

 

 

AT: How did you get involved with Eastern Promises?

 

DC: The script was developed at the BBC under David Thompson. It was

very different when I first read it, but the characters and the

subculture were all there. It was written by Steve Knight, who wrote Dirty Pretty Things

for Stephen Frears. And it’s obvious he has a good feel for embedded

subcultures, which is something that appeals to me too. 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.

 

 

It’s the first film you shot entirely outside of Canada. What was it like working in London?

 

It was good because the crew was good and the producers made me feel as

supported as you can possibly be, and I brought most of my heads of

department with me. But once I start shooting, wherever I am just

becomes a big film set. Talk about a subculture—when you’re shooting

you’re barely aware of anything else. Although the polonium poisoning

happened just down the street from me so I couldn’t ignore that. When

we started, the subject of the Russian mob in London was not

particularly in the news, but pretty soon it became radioactively hot.

Not that it’s exactly the same subject as the movie, but it is

connected.

 

 

Like most of your movies, this one pivots on the question of

identity. Viggo Mortensen’s character, Nikolai, has his identity

literally written on his body in the form of the tattoos he got in a

Russian prison.

 

Viggo does incredible research on his own. When we started, he sent me this two-volume book, Russian Criminal Tattoos. And a friend of his, Alix Lambert, had done a documentary about Russian prison tattoos called The Mark of Cain.

So they became the focus of our intense rewriting. Steve Knight had

alluded to tattoos, but in the rewrites we brought that forward, and it

gave the story a real visual and metaphorical center. And then there’s

such a wealth of books about modern Russia and the disaster it is in so

many ways. All of those things were fed into our production.

 

 

The fact that Nikolai’s story has been coded onto his flesh is

part of what makes the fight in the steam bath so extraordinary. How

did the original script describe the scene?

 

The script said, “Two men come in with knives and there’s a fight.” The

question of whether Viggo is naked or not isn’t addressed. And of

course the details of the choreography are not in the script. 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.

 

 

I found a piece that someone had posted on Ain’t It Cool News about having seen a preview of the film.

 

Was it the guy who was obsessed with Viggo’s balls?

 

 

I don’t know if I performed an act of repression, but I don’t remember seeing his balls.

 

You do see them. It’s just that they go by rather quickly.

 

 

Right. I meant I didn’t notice them in particular.

 

It wasn’t like there was a close-up of them. But this guy was obsessed. He even wrote “big hairy

balls.” Well, that’s one way of looking at it. They’re definitely

there, as you would imagine, but it’s only if you’re looking for them

that that’s what you see. Because mostly he’s shot in full figure. So

when people decide to run the DVD frame by frame, they are going to see

everything at one point or another. Of course, a lot of the time it’s

going to be slightly blurred because he’s in motion.

 

 

 

Eastern_Promises_2.jpg

 

 

It’s a very

homoerotic film. And not just because of that scene. You have this

cocooned, violent all-male society where everyone is jockeying for

power. And I think the central relationship of the film is between

Vincent Cassel’s character, Kirill, the real son of the mob leader, and

Nikolai, the “adopted” son, who Kirill sees as a threat while at the

same time being crazy in love with him and unable to admit it.

 

I discussed this with Vincent a lot, and he was completely ready to do

this. He’s played gay characters before. At first, he was thinking that

he would have to approach it that Nikolai is a father figure to him,

which he partially is also. But then it morphed as we played it, and

became very flirtatious. You can see how the Nikolai character is

mercilessly manipulating him by using the sexuality to turn him on and

off. And that was definitely in the script.

 

 

But by the end, there is something oddly tender about that relationship, because Nikolai seems to have pity for him.

 

Yes, it’s odd because it seems so real. And the Nikolai character is

ultimately so mysterious that you don’t know if it’s pure manipulation

or if there’s real compassion there. It’s hard to say.

 

 

Could you talk about the violence? There aren’t many violent

scenes—only three or four—but they’re very bloody, and one of them

happens at the very beginning, or two do, really, if you count both the

throat slitting and the pregnant girl hemorrhaging to death. After

that, there’s one other throat slitting and the big scene in the steam

bath. But they’re placed so that the effect of the entire movie is that

it’s written on the body in an extreme way.

 

 

I remember when I first picked up the script and saw the title, Eastern Promises.

I thought, this sounds like a cheap perfume, especially since in North

America, “Eastern” doesn’t mean Russia, whereas in England it does. But

then, the first scene changed my whole attitude, not only because it

was violent, but because it introduced so many interesting elements—a

kind of retarded murderer and a Turkish/Chechen cultural combination.

And there are very few characters in the violent scenes. It’s intimate,

which makes it more intense. The placing of those scenes is crucial. We

need to know all the time that they are criminals and they are

dangerous. The response I’ve gotten is that the movie is incredibly

violent. And I keep saying, “Did you see The Departed? The body count there and the brains all over the wall?” But some people seem to feel that this movie is more violent than The Departed. So then, what are you talking about? You’re not talking about how many incidents, because The Departed has dozens and we have four. Somehow, it’s the close-up, the intensity, the carrying-through.

 

 

Also, knife violence is different from gun violence. And because it’s shot so close, the violence is very sexualized.

 

We have no guns in this movie. There were no guns in the script. The

choice of those curved knives we use in the steam bath was mine.

They’re not some kind of exotic Turkish knives, they’re linoleum

knives. I felt that these guys could walk around in the streets with

these knives, and if they were ever caught, they could say “we’re

linoleum cutters.” And it’s almost like they are using their knives to

re-tattoo Nikolai and change his identity by changing the marks on his

skin.

 

 

On another subject, I want to ask you about At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World [Cronenberg’s four-minute film for Chacun son cinéma,

the compilation put together for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes

Film Festival]. I didn’t think anyone could do anything anymore that

would make that audience really uncomfortable, but your film did.

 

I hope so.

 

 

You often talk about being an atheist, but your secular Jewish identity seems to be more on your mind than in the past.

 

I think circumstances have forced it a little more out in the open. We

all know about the Holocaust and that it’s never really gone away.

There’s just been an incident here in Canada. A radical Muslim preacher

had a regular show on VisionTV,

a television network devoted to religion. Every week he’d give his

sermon, saying Jews are parasites, the Holocaust was divine

retribution, and ultimately all Jews will be annihilated. People

started saying we don’t think this should be on the air in Canada, so

they pulled him off, and then they were going to put him back on

because he’s highly respected. Meanwhile the guy issues a statement

saying, “I’m not anti-Semitic. Everything I say is just prophecy. It

says in our holy book that the Jews will be annihilated. It’s not that

I don’t like Jews.”

 

 

So in that short film, it was interesting to think for all these people

who would like there to be no Jews. Let’s propose we’re down to the

last Jew. What does America think, and what does popular media culture

think? I have one of my younger TV commentators saying, “I’m much

younger than you so, no, I have no memories whatsoever.” So will this

yearning for extermination of Jews really make much of an impression?

Or will it be a moment of dancing in the streets in certain cities of

the world, and then what? I was alluding to all that without making a

big deal of it. I don’t think this is something new for me to be

thinking about. I was also thinking of all those nice beheadings you

can get on the Internet.

 

 

I was thinking about that in Eastern Promises. The current biggest provider of snuff pornography is the Muslim extremist movement. Remember when Al Goldstein from Screw

magazine offered $50,000 if someone could bring him a real snuff film,

and no one could? Now they’re everywhere, and most involve beheadings

and throat slitting, and once again, as in Eastern Promises, it’s very sexual, very intimate. And needless to say, very disturbing.

 

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E interessante como algumas atrizes direcionam a suas carreiras e o sucesso embriagante em Hollywodd e Naomi Watts e uma rara exceção a regra, já que declarou abertamente que e aversa a realizar comédias e esta megulhando de cabeça em papéis profundos e dramáticos,como Funny Games e o Easterm Promisses que aliás já esta estreando nos cinemas americanos e deve receber as suas primeiras críticas, mas pelo trailer intimista e tenso deve ser no mínimo bom e prazeroso de se assitir.E parece que ta rolando mesmo exploração sexual de mulheres na Ingalterra pela máfia Russia tornando o tema polêmico e obrigatorio de se ver viva David Cronenberg

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A Play Arte é um luxo pra não dizer outra coisa ...14

É uma pena que esse filme tenha recebido esse tipo de tratamento por parte da distribuidora.

 

PS: Já existem materiais promocionais de "A Bússola de Ouro" e mais parece o do "Primo Basílio" de tão ruim ...
Thiago Lucio2007-11-28 11:50:38
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Eastern-Promises.jpg

 

Senhores do Crime (Eastern Promisses; David Cronenberg; 2007)

Ótimo, raspando no excelente. Viggo Mortensen parece ter aprendido atuar depois de tantas atuações intragáveis (com exceção de Marcas da Violência, só fazia merda), ele aqui é tão expressivo que em certas partes diálogos são desnecessários (apesar de serem muito bons, diga-se). Ele mantém-se totalmente concentrado quando está em cena, postura sempre ereta para indicar sua segurança, mas ao mesmo tempo trabalha desde o começo a revelação que é feita sobre seu personagem, mas de maneira sutil e através de atos singelos.

Naomi Watts também dá um show, trazendo aqui sua segunda melhor composição (advinha qual é a primeira...), entregando todo aquele nervosismo e medo de entrar em um mundo que jamais entrou ou tentou ignorar, com aquela expressividade no olhar tão boa (ou melhor) quanto aquela no O Despertar de Uma Paixão. A relação que ela estabelece com a nenezinha é tão...

O Cronenberg, por sua vez, supera a monotonia do roteiro, estabelecendo as relações dos personagens de maneira pouco intrusiva. Ele filma sem grandes movimentos de câmera, decisão muito boa, já que mantem aquele clima perigoso que após a cena da sauna (a melhor cena do ano!) beira ao sufocante, desviando do rumo fraco que o roteiro toma (não gostei da conclusão). Ele jamais perde um segundo do longa, se não está estabelecendo este clima, está desenvolvendo os personagens e estreitando a ligação entre Anna e o espectador. Direção muito sábia, que só poderia ter sido vinda de um veterano mesmo.

Alguma burradas do roteiro não comprometem, apenas aumentam o êxito do Cronenberg. Está abaixo de Marcas da Violência, mas mesmo assim é excelente. 4,5/5

Bernardo2007-12-19 13:44:22
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Cronenberg' date=' por sua vez, supera a monotonia do roteiro

Alguma burradas do roteiro não comprometem, apenas aumentam o êxito do Cronenberg. Está abaixo de Marcas da Violência, mas mesmo assim é excelente. 4,5/5
[/quote']

 

O que seria exatamente essa monotonia do roteiro  ?
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A falta de nuances dos personagens durante o segundo ato' date=' especialmente do Cassel e do pai do Cassel. E num filme que se concentra principalmente nos personagens, a falta de nuances no roteiro torna o filme monótono.


Ou tornaria. O Cronenberg soube desviar disso.
[/quote']

 

Eu acho essa tal de "falta de nuances" no roteiro bem proposital, especialmente considerando que ali foi onde se preparou o terreno pra tudo aquilo que acontece no terceiro ato, o porque acontece e etc, demonstrando o caráter exagerado do personagem do Cassel, por exemplo, mesmo que sendo de uma maneira estereotipada (o que eu não creio que tenha sido o caso). Bem válido
Beckin2007-12-20 11:54:41
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Na minha opinião não só o melhor filme desse ano, mas o melhor dos últimos tempos. Foda ao extremo... tudo funciona em perfeita sintonia: roteiro, atmosfera, atores, etc.. E falando em atores, Viggo Mortensen e Naomi Watts em atuações monumentais.

Obs. visto em DVD. Fulgora2007-12-31 14:48:10
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