Eastern Promises, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Russian Mob.

Eastern Promises is a story set among the Russian mob of London. A London midwife, Anna, delivers a baby to a dying "junkie". The only clue of the mother's identity is a diary written in Russian. In the diary is a business card for a Russian restaurant, The Trans-Siberian. Anna's uncle can read Russian but refuses to translate, "bury her secrets with her". In desperation she turns to restaurant of the business card, The Trans-Siberian. The kindly restaurateur who helps Anna with translating turns out to be a little too involved.

Middle class morality is often held to ridicule and derision. In our western countries we have such nicely smug bourgeois lives that we forget there are much worse ways of organizing society. Soviet Russia was resolutely not a bourgeois society, its operating principals did not allow for the rule of law but for the will of proletariat. There were often times when "ordinary" criminals were better treated then political prisoners. For more insight into Soviet prisons read The Gulag Archipelago.

The thing about migrations is that the people, tribes, clans, sects, who had to move are the losers. They had to move, there were pushed out. Why they had to move can vary population explosion to economic collapse. The message from the fall of Rome is that other people's population growth, internal struggles, economic problems is a threat to everyone because it encourages migration that if unchecked will seriously damage the "host" community. Other countries successes, lots of children, or failure, not enough jobs for all the children, can destroy our own happiness no matter how removed they are from own own.

Inconsistency alert. This movie take place in London but within the London Russian emigre community, the Russian mob types are all recent arrivals and the the nurse is secound generation. There is some display of orthodox icons and religiosity by many characters. However the characters, both the gangsters and the semi-assimilated family of the midwife refer to Christmas as happening on 25 December on our Gregorian calendar, rather than Christmas occurring according to the Orthodox Church calendar or approximately two weeks later.

Macbeth

Macbeth is a gangster story. Every gangster story I have seen is the story about the rise and fall of one criminal / murderer. The collapse of hope is necessary because the gangster story is trying to teach us about human frailty, we are all gonna die. The loss at the end of the story is a neccessary conterpoint to fleeting joy earlier. The other message is that treachery is in all our hearts. Trust no one.

The other great Shakespearian gangster story is Richard III. A guy whacks his brother, "protects" his nephews, marries his sister-in-law, has success, finally falls to another thug. The thing about Shakespear's plays is that most of the histories and tragedies that deal with the struggle for power could easily be described as "gangster stories". This movie is at least the fifth movie version of "mafia Macbeth".

This is an adaption. The director defended his process of cutting and pasting by explaining that much of the play, as written, is made to fit the requirements and standards of The Lord Chamberlain's Men. Shakespear wrote for a large company that all needed the work. Most of the lords except for Banquo and Malcolm have been merged into two or three characters. The re arranging is justified as something that the bard, as a working stage director as well as playwright would understand. The words themselves remain. There is no rewritting of the actual words, unlike in some other adaptations.

This is a pleasantly gory Macbeth. Sometimes gun battles can be staged to be more antiseptic than the hacking glory of sword work. The blood does need to be spilled in this story. The final gory battle between Malcolm and Macbeth is knockdown fight with guns, fists and knives. Cool.

What I learned: The police can be usefull allies in a gangland war.