Happy-Go-Lucky (Leigh, 2008): It just is

Title: Happy-Go-Lucky
Director: Mike Leigh
Language: English
Year: 2008
Critical Reception: Stephanie Zacharek of Salon gave a perfect mark to the film.
Psych Index: In Therapy
In Brief: A film that's going to make good of its title and make you happy, unless you're a Satanist, of course.

Comment (SPOILERS ALERT):
"It's such a loss / For the good guys / Afraid of this life / That it just is / 'Cause everybody dies" - Rilo Kiley, It just is

Fifteen or so minutes into the film (timing uncertain), Poppy (Sally Hawkins) seemed to have thrown her back out. At this point, someone in the audience uttered an 'oh noes,' as we all prepared for a tragedy-of-the-week disease that would surely cripple our heroine physically but not spiritually. Something must be wrong with her, we reasoned. We have been conditioned, to some extent, to expect what health professionals call 'the medical model of disease' in character-study films: we must look for what is going to fall apart, because life is only worth examining after it's infected with a disease. Our protagonist must be flawed - the more tragic, the more appealing s/he is (Hamlet, anyone?) - so personal growth and world revelation can be had by the time the credits roll. Fifteen more minutes hopped by, and Poppy still went about her merry way as one plucky duck living an ordinarily happy life of a primary school teacher. Yet, instead of boring us with trivial details or melodramatic plot points, Poppy, with the knowing and playful look in her eyes, reeled us in so effortlessly, perhaps even in spite of some of our initial reservations. As she stepped out of her student driver car and walked towards the door of her apartment, she turned to Scott (Eddie Marsan) - her driving instructor whose point of view the audience adopted at the moment - and said: "I'm watching you." Yes, she would be, and so would we.

I once had a conversation with someone who claimed that insecurities added much complexity to a person's character or something along that line. If I had the time to give a proper response, I would have pointed to how this statement reflected his judgment about himself and the reason for his inclination to keep at his own shortcomings. Our world view is a mirror of our internal process, as any therapist worth her salt would tell you. Darkness, imperfections, insecurities are a part of humanity, but they are not the total of our complexity. The tortured artists live to tell tortured stories, but there is room for lightness, too, and it doesn't have to be unbearable.

Happy-Go-Lucky was a rare psychology film - if not a therapeutic film - disguised as a small character study drama. Mike Leigh (director) kept cinematic effects to the minimum, letting his characters unveiled in natural progressions, though his camera was always exactly where Leigh wanted the audience to be. The sophistication behind the deceptively simple film worked in tandem with the sophistication behind the deceptively happy Poppy, as they both revealed themselves in richly subtle details. Like her namesake, Poppy was a brightly decorated wildflower (watch for the use of her jewelery in the film). As a symbol of death in some cultures and a symbol of love in others, Poppy existed beyond just her character in the film; her decision to forego moral judgment about herself and others served as a mirror upon which others' moral judgment on themselves and the world could reveal itself. Again, in some therapeutic schools of thought, this would be the ideal therapeutic state for the therapist and her client to be in.

From a certain therapeutic point of view (namely, one that concerns human's private logic and/or childhood influences on the adult's life), Happy-Go-Lucky is an essential viewing. The film illustrated so beautifully how easy for us to pass judgment on a slice of presentation people would give us, and how their way of being could be understood within the context of where they've been emotionally. As annoying as Poppy's plucky way may seem to some of us (understandable reaction, since it is quite often associated with insincerity, for not many people could be that happy in face of so many life nuisances and many people do front a happy face to the world), and as creepy as Scott's paranoia may be, we would be missing many of their surprising character nuances if we had simply framed them as nothing more than moving figures on a screen. Of course, it would be our choice whether to give each other the time of our life or not, just as it was Poppy's choice how she wanted to work it out with Scott. But if there was any desire to see people beyond what they presented, a little patience would come a long way.

In therapy, one way in which a therapist can facilitate empathic understanding is to summarize the emotional state of his/her client. When Scott went on one of his bitter rants about the world, Poppy summed up his entire character's emotional space with just "it's not easy being you, is it?" This was the kind of message that was at the heart of the film: to understand and reach out to someone like Scott, one should look at not only how he got there ("were you picked on in school, Scott?" she asked, hitting yet another sweet spot), but also how this view made him feel about his place in the world. The goal was never to merely play with him like an object for entertainment and what not (which she was guilty of at first, to amuse herself), but to communicate, essentially, to him that another human being for one moment knew what it felt like for him, however superficially or momentarily. Poppy had the knack for crystallizing the emotional core from the stories people tell her, the kind of microskill therapists can only hope to develop to be as astute as hers.

What makes for happiness, the big question hovering over the film, is perhaps just to have someone witness who we are as an emotional being, entangled in our past, present, and future. And that, friends, is also the secret to personal therapy, the reason why therapeutic relationship has often been found to be the central most important factor to successful therapy. Like therapy, and like Poppy, the film offered not only a form of emotional release, but also an opportunity to see how judgment may form - often in the years of our least defensible and therefore beyond our conscious control - and how it could trap us in our wheeling and dealing with the world. This is not to say we should be free of judgment (it's quite natural - even Poppy did it in the film!), or be more like Poppy (who had to learn of her effect on others and be at peace with it). Rather, we might want to inspect the boat we've been put into and recognize that some people just drown, not entirely of their own doing. It maybe an easy way out, in some ways, for the film to offer neither a solution nor a way out. And in some ways, it may be just the right way out. Sometimes, there's not much more you can ascribe to life, other than "it just is."

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Films '08: Ten Performances, the Alternate list

I lied about the year 2008 being not a great year for performances from women. It was half-truth in any case, because it was indeed a great year for women if I had counted the films not shown officially in wide or limited release. To honour the true memorable performances of 2008 for me, here is a list that accounts for performances I really loved this past year from films I did not see 'officially' in theatre. And I'm happy to say that the passionate woman folks make the most of their appearances here.

Laura Baquela & Nassim Amrabt (representing the cast of Entre les murs, or The Class);
Gianfelice Imparato, Marco Macor, Ciro Petrone (representing the cast of Gomorra)

These two films brought together some of the best cast that I've seen last year. Entre les murs (or The Class) cast consisted of mostly non-actors (or more accurately, people who weren't acting professionally up until this picture), including the film's actor/writer François Bégaudeau. Maybe that was how they were able to re-create such a dynamic environment. The kids especially seemed at ease within themselves - it was as if their instruction was: "act like how you'd act in class." If there was a script, it was hardly presented as so on the screen, which was a real credit to the fantastic cast. Gomorra's electrifying cast was as equally dynamic and complex. I couldn't begin to imagine what it was like living in such an environment but the cast just sucked me right in. I had a hard time deciding which performance to single out because it was a true ensemble picture and it felt like everybody went the extra mile for his/her role. A list consisting of only the cast members of these two films could be made - the talent was that thick.

Eileen Yañez (Desierto adentro; The Desert Within, Pla)

Her character, Micaela, did not take 'no' for an answer, even if she had to be pay the price for willfulness. Eileen Yañez was raw and ferocious in her defiance against the madness of her father. She was all flesh, desire, and a searing reminder of how repression could stoke the very fire it was meant to eradicate. So much unchecked passion in one performance, and yet Yanez was able to reign it in when necessary and kept it from becoming a one-note character. She held her own nicely against Mario Zaragoza as well.

François Bégaudeau (Entre les murs; The Class, Cantet)

Bégaudeau wrote the book, then the screenplay for the film based on this book, bringing his own experience teaching at an inner city middle school in Paris to the script as well as his own role. Previous credits to his name included being a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma and the French version of Playboy, so one could assume the intellectual pain written on his face was unavoidable. In some ways, it benefited the role of François Marin, a teacher struggling to grasp the divide between what and how he taught with the changing structure of the receiving medium of this knowledge. He looked and behaved as if he'd been at the job for a while (which he had been), lending a certain kind of authenticity to the role that acting alone may not have given him (good thing too, considering his non-existing acting career up until now). It was one of the most measured and yet natural performances I've seen this past year.

Salvatore Cantalupo (Gomorra, Garrone)

Salvatore Cantalupo's character, the haute couture tailor Pasquale, stood out the most from the cast for me (who was all so equally great). To come up with the much needed cash, Pasquale risked his life to train his boss' competitors in secret. There was a certain awareness to Cantalupo's choices that somehow made them even more painful to watch as they unfolded. Sometimes, neither the noble things in life - loyalty, doing the right thing - nor even death could dissuade someone from the path that would lead to the pot of gold, at times the only assurance to survival or the promise thereof. Cantalupo's weary, intelligent, restrained performance gave a much needed centering effect in this often chaotic but gutsy film.

Yavuz Bingol (Üç maymun; Three Monkeys, Ceylan)

One could feel Bingol's character steaming and seething in the washed out frames, as he tried to stay dignified while the situation and his beloved made a mockery of him. His pride threatened to kill what was left of his family. Here was a betrayed man who knew he was as much to blame as anyone in the picture, but couldn't quite convince himself to forgive. Bingol transformed from being the victim to the aggressor with much ease (that scene in which he tried to regain his sense of a domineering man over his wife was truly difficult to watch, because he was so good at it). It was a complicated, emotionally draining performance in one of two pictures I saw at the Vancouver Film Fest with a cast worthy of a comparison to Bergman's chamber drama casting (the other one being Wolke Neun, also on this list).

Horst Rehberg & Horst Westphal (Wolke Neun; Cloud9, Dresen)

What made Inge's choice particularly difficult, beyond the fact that she had already made so many life-anchoring choices that could not simply be undo at the flick of passion, was that there was no lesser man amongst them. Westphal's Karl was the 'other man,' the 'seducer'; he was obviously the making of what Inge needed at the time - a lighting jolt to remind her how she had buried that live-in-the-moment Inge that her husband knew too well of (and seemed to have helped tame it). Westphal played him with much humour and sincerity, and never once made him a caricature of a dream. Rehberg was equally adept at bringing out the humanity in his character. Even when it was implied that Rehberg's Werner was the less lively of the two men (there were scattered laughter amongst the audience when Inge and Werner listened to his records of audio sound of trains entering a station), Rehberg's dignified, honest, distraught performance evoked more empathy than pity. Luckily, unlike the film, for this list, there was no need to choose between the two. Both men can stay here, as they are.

Mario Zaragoza (Desierto adentro; The Desert Within, Pla)

Elías was crazy. There was no way around it - nobody could've put his family through so much non-sense in the name of faith. But Desierto adentro was not a film to be taken literally, and neither was Zaragoza's Elías. A non-believer at heart, Elías took refuge in religion as his loved ones were taken from him one by one, at a seemingly unfair and terrifying pace. I wrote in my review of the film: "Mario Zaragoza won Best Actor prize at the Guadalajara Film Festival for his incredibly human portrayal of a frightening father figure. Dictatorship never felt more tender and loving, if such a thing was possible at all."

Hatice Aslan (Üç maymun; Three Monkeys, Ceylan)

At the heart of Üç maymun (Three Monkeys) was Aslan's Hacer, a hot potato of sort, a woman who would kiss her captors' hands. Halfway through her affair, Hacer raised the stake and fell for the same man who exploited her and knowingly put her family through hell by being a complete coward. Why, Hacer, why? Perhaps she was seduced by the promise of someone who could 'take care' of her, however naively that belief was. Perhaps she just wanted someone to hold while her husband toiled away elsewhere with no obvious consideration for her loneliness. Perhaps he made her feel, as Meg White sang in 'In the Cold, cold night,' "like a full grown woman might." The audience may never know the exact reason for Hacer's uncertain virtues, but there was no mistaking Aslan's brave, heartbreaking performance. The trick for her character was to sustain the audience's sympathy while being an accomplice to the crimes committed by the men in her life. It was a difficult role, unusually complex both emotionally and morally, and Aslan smartly committed to the screen a Hacer that was both naked and unknowable.

Zhou Xun (The Equation of Love and Death, Cao)

Li Mi was one crazy ex girlfriend, the kind that would hunt you down and wait on you forever because, well, because she was just the kind of girl who knew exactly what she wanted and baby, she desperately wanted you, even if you disappeared into thin air and left no trace behind. She bullheaded her way through the film, but Zhou Xun never denied her character a break from being the strong, independent woman. I haven't seen Zhou Xun in anything else before, and this was a star-making turn that unfortunately didn't materialize to more notice in North America. Yet. There will be more opportunities, one would hope, for such a bright young star.

Ursula Werner (Wolke Neun; Cloud9, Dresen)

Inge was a woman in her 60s, going about the routine of old age, waiting on the second hand to count down the numbered years left in her life. The years had given her a loving husband, a daughter who understood her, and rambunctious grand children. She had a happy marriage - everything was as it should have been. Then one day she slept with one customer, a man also in his 60s whom she had been providing tailoring services to. What was she thinking? Impulsiveness was the province of youth, wasn't it? What was all this ... lust? At what point in life would one stop being seduced by passion and all its promises? For Inge, she wasn't about to stop then. Ursula Werner gave an impassioned, heartbreaking, courageous, naked (in more ways than one) performance that stayed with me days and days afterward. And it's difficult to think of another performance that could top this one this past year.

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Films '08: Ten performances

2008 has been a solid year in films, both for homegrown and English-subtitled films. Heath Ledger's Joker rivaled Sarah Palin as the ultimate Halloween figure everybody wanted to dress up as. Ralph Fiennes starred in three different roles and delivered on all of them, though he seems at this point unlikely to land an Oscar for any of these roles. Ledger, on the other hand, seems set to win a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Mickey Rourke, meanwhile, quietly gave the performance of his career in The Wrestler, and Tom Cruise almost saved his career with a surprising turn in Tropic Thunder. Yes, it was a great year for characters and performances of the male species, and a decent - not great - for those of the female species. There's always this year, right, folks?

Ten memorable performances from the films released officially in Canada this past year (excluding those from films played only at film festivals):

Cate Blanchett
(Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)

Blanchett's rendering a (much better, in my not very humble opinion) Greta Garbo's calculated, woman-of-principles Ninotchka (Lubitsch, 1939) impression was the highlight of the most anticipated film of the year. Whether she's playing some complex woman in smaller art fares or iconic roles in mainstream blockbusters, the uber-talented and versatile actress always seems to know how to stand out without sacrificing what's needed for her roles. Even in a fluff piece like this one, she stayed collected while straddling the line between cool villainess and campy witch, and allowing her character a bit of vulnerability towards the end.

Emile Hirsch
(Milk)

Hirsch completely disappeared into his role as Cleve Jones, one of Harvey Milk's key supporters in helping him get elected to office and rally support for gay rights in Milk (van Sant, 2008). Yet, this was far from a wallpaper character; Cleve Jones gave a shot of energy to the mild-mannered Milk (Sean Penn, in a surprisingly restrained performance) while staying firmly outside his sexual conquests circle. He was as cautious of probabilities as he was inspired and motivated by possibilities. Witty, savvy and brimming with youthful enthusiasm, Cleve Jones as played by Hirsch reminded me so much of the gay youth I have met and known in my life. What's a better measure of a performance than having the target audience look to the screen and say: "I know you?"

Dev Patel
(Slumdog Millionaire)

Dev Patel carried the emotional tone of this unabashedly optimistic crowd-pleaser just right: appropriately worn, but not beaten. Given the melodramatic story line, it is important that the actors be committed to their role to keep the film from sliding into camp, and Dev's eyes never once winked at the camera, at least not until the credits rolled. Without him, this may have come off a bit of a joke, what's with the overacting from the rest of the cast (save for the delightful little boy). Hopefully the popularity of Slumdog amongst the awards circle would translate to more roles for Dev, who seems like an exciting new face to watch (though I have a feeling this was a one-shot deal for him, unfortunately).

Naomi Watts
(Funny Games)

The Queen of remakes was back at the game with this shot-for-shot remake of the 1997 Austrian horror by the same director/writer, Michael Haneke. While this was no King Kong's Ann, Naomi still brought to her role the same brand of vulnerability that made her one of a handful of go-to girls for directors with a penchant for women on the verge of a nervous breakdown (nobody breaks down on screen more often than she does, except may be Julianne Moore). It wasn't an extraordinary role considering her filmography, but a typical day's work from Naomi was still something to behold (see the scene where she, stripped down to her undergarments, willed herself to survival after witnessing the tragedy befalling her family).

Brad Pitt
(Burn After Reading)

The pretty boy can act, and he's really good at comedic roles. He hasn't been given as thick a character as this one before - the wink in his eyes often hints at something else more insidious going on in his head. For this role, he went completely blank. And by completely dimming the light in his eyes, he gave us one of the most memorable Pitt performances ever (not to mention one of the top 10 of the year).

Ralph Fiennes
(The Duchess)

Quick, name something boring! How about a vegan recipe? Yes. I will pay someone else's good money to see Ralph Fiennes read, nay, contemplate a vegan recipe. I bet I'd actually want to make something vegan by the end of it, only because Ralph Fiennes has a way of making everything he focuses on interesting. In the Duchess, he played this disinterested bore of a husband who was also abusive and cruel. Because it was Ralph Fiennes and not someone else, the Duke of Devonshire managed to be a compelling figure to watch, even though, by Keira Knightley's Georgiana account, he was a man of no interest other than his dogs. Similar to the case of Naomi Watts, even if this was not a particularly outstanding role considering his filmography, Fiennes was still able to deliver a better performance than most this past year.

Penelope Cruz
(Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

This was the role that completely changed my mind about what Penelope Cruz was capable of. I really did not expect that kind of a wild, fierce, uninhibited woman to come out of her. I rarely get the feeling that I'm watching someone special on screen, but Cruz's Maria Elena was almost mythical. Could anyone else pull off this role? May be, but she would have some impossibly big hair to fill.

Philip Seymour Hoffman
(Synecdoche, New York)

For this movie to work, Hoffman needed to be as sympathetic as possible while playing a rather pitiful man. He was always the judge of someone's performance - his partners', his cast's, his daughter's, his own. He lived, but only from a distance. It was a tricky role to play but somehow Hoffman was able to make it seem natural, and in doing so, he made the subject tackled here (existential anxiety) more manageable. Another winner in the bag for one of the best actors working today.

Mickey Rourke
(The Wrestler)

We've seen this character many times before - the sad shadow of a larger-than-life dreamer who hangs on to his glory way past its expiry date. But Mickey Rourke's Robin 'Randy' Robinson was not some important historical figure who lead a terribly glorified, complicated life. He was just part of a fabricated myth in a supposedly fake sport, an entertainer-hero in the WWE, the modern world's pretend version of a blood sport. Yet, no matter how scripted 'fate' was in the ring, the blood shed was real. Even as the toll on his body began to be too taxing for him, he pressed on. Being 'Randy' was his only way to feel love and acceptance, his escape from a real life's worth of very ordinary but very real pain, or so he believed. Rourke convincingly hit all the right spots - he was tender, funny, awkward, courageous, human. This was no one-trick pony, even if he had to play one here.

Heath Ledger
(The Dark Knight)

The late actor's performance benefited from the feel of the film, which was built around his manic, yet melancholic figure. However, the film would not have been nearly as successful as it was without Heath's psychopathic Joker. Ledger's performance was the best of the year not because it was an iconic one, or the flashiest one. It was the best of the year because there was no trace of Heath Ledger, the actor, anywhere in the role. Perhaps it was because The Joker himself was an actor that made it easy for Ledger to slip into the role, or perhaps Ledger really lost himself in all that make-up. His Joker was no comic book character coming to life (Jack Nicholson was there already); he was as close to an approximation of a glorified human psychopath as you can get. And it was probably as close as you'd want to get.

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Films not yet seen that could've made an impact on this list:
A Christmas Tale (Desplechin)
Happy Go Lucky (Leigh)
Changeling (Eastwood)
Wendy and Lucy (Reichardt)
Frozen River (Hunt)
Doubt (Shanley)

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Kill Bill and the Truth Serum

In the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill (Vol. 2; 2003), Bill (as played by David Caradine) shot The Bride (as played by Uma Thurman) with what he called The Truth Serum. The basic premise was that the injected drug would suspend her volition while allowing her to express herself verbally. The Truth Serum may not be as fictional as it may sound. The notion of the Truth Serum dated back to the invention of a Texas country doctor by the name of Robert House during the 1920s.

He claimed that scopolamine, a well known anesthetic, could suspend volition without impairing communication, allowing untampered access to memories or the authentic self (Winter, 2004). Even though the courts dismissed his claim, the notion struck a chord with the lay audience, police, and forensic practitioners. The barbiturates sodium amytal and sodium pentothal, first synthesized in 1927 and 1929 respectively for surgical anesthesia, were tested as truth drugs. Eventually, these barbiturates replaced scopolamine as the drugs of choice for inducing truth from a subject. Amytal, in particular, was used (by Bleckwenn and Lorenz, in particular) to induce states of profound unconsciousness in those who had been catatonic for a long time, allowing them to temporarily revive activity, communicativeness, and "some element of the former normal selves' (Winter, 2004). Schizophrenics treated with amytal were able to describe their hallucinations at some point (as cited in Winter, 2004).

Amytal's reputation with the reconstruction of the individual made it popular as a treatment for psychiatric casualties of war trauma. A more biological based theory regarding amytal's effects arose in the post WWII years, postulating that its effect had do to with the suppression of the autonomic nervous system, preventing the production of the nervous response to fear that was triggered by the individual's traumatized states (Sargant and Slater, 1944; see also Sargant's 1942 film, The Treatment of War Neuroses). Of course, subjects' behaviour as altered by the drug (in some cases, subjects were noted to behave like a spoilt child under treatment) were attributed to the 'authentic self' rather than the creation of the drug. Interestingly, 'inappropriate' or adverse reactions to treatment by the application of amytal (such as the refusal to speak under the drug influence) were deemed an indication of the lack of neuroses and the presence of malingering.

While the truthfulness of subjects' account can be debated, amytal is continued to be used today in the treatment of various psychological disorders, such as anxiety, insomnia and epilepsy. It does not have the paralyzing effect as portrayed in the film Kill Bill, but it is not entirely impossible that it elicits certain behaviour from the affected.

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Film(s) to watch: John Huston's Let there be light (1946), Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), Frankenheimer and Axelrod's The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

References:
Sargant, W., & Slater, E. (1944). An introduction to physical methods of treatment in psychiatry. London: Livingston.

Winter, A. (2004). Screening selves: Sciences of memory and identity on film, 1930-1960. History of Psychology, 7(24), 367-401.

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Eastern Promises: All in the family

Title: Eastern Promises
Director: David Cronenberg
Language: English, with some Russian
Year: 2007
Critical Reception: People's Choice Award for Best film at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Kudos from Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, The New York Times' A. O. Scott, Chicago Reader's Johnathan Rosenbaum, Variety's Todd McCarthy,Village's Voice J. Hoberman.
Psych Index: Constructivism, Post-modernism, Narrative Psychology
In Brief: Cronenberg's follow up to A History of Violence began with the death of a teen mother and the birth of her daughter. The midwife who took on the victim's case, Anna (Naomi Watts), with what little information she could obtain from the victim's diary, traced her way to the head of a London-based Russian mafia family, Semyon (Armin Muehller-Stahl). Semyon, determined to protect his family and keep his son's (Vincent Cassell) involvement a dirty little secret, proceeded to keep the matter from surfacing by enlisting the help of Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen), his son's mysterious driver and right hand man. What ensued was a violent game of survival, and Nikolai and Anna found themselves doing what perhaps neither intended to do.

Comment (SPOILERS ALERT):
Comical, absurd, and brutal are all apt adjectives to describe the film. At its heart, Eastern Promises is not only an exercise in genre deconstruction, but also an examination of the new, lonely, postmodern human family. There is no nuclear family to be found anywhere in the film. Instead, each character seems to pick up the separate pieces and attempt to make them whole. This rather constructivistic approach defines the new post modern family: family is what you make of it.

Anna is a newly single woman who lives with her mother, and this family of origin seems to consist of just one other family member: her uncle. Semyon, the head of the Russian mafia family, is a single father. He raises his only son, Kirill, filling both the traditional mother role (he cooks and throws parties) and father role (he's also the breadwinner of the father-son family). Kirill is a playboy, bearing contempt for women, his father, and himself. His love-hate affection extends to his right-hand man, Nikolai, whom he may or may not have sexual feelings towards. He is alone, for everybody - even his father and Nikolai - looks upon him as an isolated, impotent man with little insight about his own situation. Nikolai is a lone ranger with dubious intents and agenda. At one point, he declares to the panel that officially inducts him into the Russian mafia family rank that he has no mother or father. Elsewhere, the father-and-son duo Azim and Ekrim serve as the exclamation mark on the "one is the loneliest number" phrase. Each character yearns for wholeness of family, even when that ideal at times seems like an empty promise.

Within this new societal structure, a different breed of man is born. Nikolai is the new face of post modern man looking for his place atop the chain. His motives are cloaked in uncertainty - uncertainty being a hallmark of postmodernism. Is he or is he not a man of virtuous morality? He declares himself dead at the age of 15 - though one wonders if that's only a front to appease the environment he operates in, or if he is really spiritually barren. He keeps his eyes on the prize, but he also stops to smell the roses. Although he seems flirtatious towards Anna, he does not refuse Kirill's physical and emotional demands. The film is fascinated with the biology of human form, and Nikolai is examined the same way a scientist examines a specimen: his physical form in full, accompanied by his instinctive reactions to his environment. Particularly telling is the incredibly choreographed fight sequence in which Nikolai - in his full animal instinct mode - fights off a couple of men in the nude. "Who are you?" Anna would ask. It would seem that he's our new cave man on display.

Eastern Promises also addresses the hopeful ideal of the grass being greener on the other side. "The West" has been seen as the promised land to many people from all over the world, yearning for a better life. Immigrants to the States, Canada, U.K., etc. know all about the promised land, and the dreams - achieved or broken - that go along with it. Tatianna, the teenage mother, seeks to escape an impoverished life by hanging to the promise of a better life elsewhere - in this case, the East for her. East or West, it seems a matter of narrative construction. Narrative psychology postulates that the meaning we attribute to human behaviour and discourse are largely dependent on the stories we tell ourselves. There are a couple of instances in the film in which a life is told like a story - Tatiana's diary is read many times like a story, and Nikolai's stories are told on his body through the various tattoos as well as his confession to the Russian mafia family. When a person falls into a desperate situation, what s/he tells herself greatly affects his/her decision. The grass seems greener on the other side for Tatiana - both the promise of escape from poverty, and the promise of escape from her miserable condition. In both instances, her action logically follows her narrative, even though it may seem unwise to others. The grass may not be greener, but it gives hope where there's nothing else.

The film also touches on the explosive issues of homosexuality and racism. However, rather than confronting the characters directly, the film lets them live in a bigger world and face the possible consequences of their choice. Kirill may or may not be homosexual (the film strongly alludes to, but does not explicitly states so), yet his affection for Nikolai complicates the extreme defensive reaction he has to others' accusation of his being one. Anna's uncle expresses strong racist remarks, which prompts a subsequent politically correct reprimand follows by a subtler racist scold. He is clearly a product of his environment, and the film refreshingly does not make a moral judgment on his behaviour. It fits in with the way the film is handled - with the detachment and curiosity of a scientist at heart.

The film succeeds in finding the unfamiliarity in the familiarity. It offers a complex take on the face of humanity now. It constructs and deconstructs all at once, making it an ideal film for fans of narrative theory to view. At the very least, it presents a testimony on the loneliness of the world and the need to make the connections wherever we can, as the family unit disintegrates and reforms.

Thoughts in point form:
1. The new 'family' - it's what you make.
2. One is the loneliest number: juxtapose of mafia family and the singleness of family - single mother, single daughter, single uncle, single father, single son.
3. The portrait of a "new" man of power - playing all sides, thirsting for power, but for questionable, ambiguous reasons
4. The fascination with 'man as animal' - even violence seems less about aggression than about reactionary survival measures
5. The undermining form of narrative - unfamiliarity of familiarity, including play-on stereotypes (gay only son, joke about black doctor)
6. Comical, absurd, brutal violence
7. Image of unarmed man against archaic form of arms - animalistic
8. Brave performance, great score, daft direction
9. "eastern promises" play on "western promises" - "the grass is greener on the other side", looking for ideals that ultimately don't deliver
10. brave work is meant to be seen once, as the majority of the audience would be placed in a discomforting zone and wouldn't like to repeat the experience, even though they're provoked by it
11. shares with A History of Violence the fresh take on a familiar genre and a fascination with the biology of violence, but focuses less on violence and more on social loneliness, even though it features one of the most interesting fight sequences committed to the big screen.
12. flirt w/ issues of homosexuality and racism

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