Great film...especially tattoos

Eastern Promises is a 2007 Canadian drama/thriller feature film directed by David Cronenberg, the director of "History of Violence". The screenplay was by Dirty Pretty Things writer Steven Knight. The film tells of a British midwife's interactions with the Russian mafia in London and stars Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts. The film has been noted for its unexpected plot twist and for its violence and realistic depiction of the Russian criminal underworld, including its use of tattoos. Criminal mastermind Nikolai (Mortensen) finds his ties to a notorious crime family shaken when he crosses paths with Anna (Watts), a midwife who has accidentally uncovered evidence against them.




Awards

The film premiered September 8, 2007 at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on general release in North America on September 21, 2007. The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 26, 2007. As of January 31, 2008, the film has grossed $51,202,291 worldwide and has received a positive critical reception, appearing on several U.S. critics' "top ten films" lists for 2007. Eastern Promises has won several awards, including the Audience Prize for best film at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Best Actor award for Mortensen at the 2007 British Independent Film Awards. The film received twelve Genie Award nominations, three Golden Globe Award nominations, and Mortensen was nominated for Best Actor at the 80th Academy Awards, losing to Daniel Day Lewis.


The thing that most fascinated me in this film is tattoos and stories that there was around. I wanted to talk about it in more detail :

History of tattoos

For most people, tattoos are a way of decorating the body with images that say something about who they are. In the russian prison camps, tattoos mean much more. Firstly they say where the owner comes in the criminal pecking order. For example a cross in the middle of the chest is the tattoo of the "prince of thieves", the hightest rank of criminal. Secondly they say what the wearer is inside for - for example a genie and a lamp means a druf - related crime.

Other tattoos are worn for more sinister reasons. They can show that a prisoner hasn't paid his gambling debts, or is a stool pigeon. This kind of tattoo normally has a pornographic image that humiliates the wearer, and is applied forcibly, with a beating thrown in too. Tattoos used for humiliation like this are worn where they can be seen, on the forehead. That's why tattoos command such respect in russian prisons. People lie and cheat and they let you down, but a tattoo is forever, and the mark of a tattoo removed from the forehead tells its own story.


Then there is the "grin" tattoo, normally an animal like a fox or a wolf, grinning defiantly at the prison guards and authority in general. It shows a refusal to be beaten by the system. Russian prisons have wall a covered with the slogans of the authorities : grin tattoos are the prisoner's answers to this. They carry their own slogans, like "I'll never be a soviet serf" and "flatten stool pigeons!"

Although russian prisoner tattoos can be elaborate, they're not great works of art. They tend to be bluish grey and the lines are blurred. The materials used for tattoos done in prison are basic - anything that's available. Ink can be made by heating up the sole of a shoe till it is semi-liquid and they mixing it with urine. The tattoo artist's needle is anything sharp to hand - a knife, a pin, a sharp piece of metal.


Wearing the wrong tattoo can upset people. In soviet times it is said that there were secret orders that anti-governement "grin" tattoos had to be destroyed surgically. This procedure was usually fatal. And within the prisoner's community, a prisoner wearing a tattoo that gives him highter rank than is his to claim is a serious insult. In one of the camps a prisoner was told by gang leaders that he had three hours to remove a tattoo : "use sandpaper, aknife, a red-hot poker, anything you like, but take it off". But then he was lucky - most cases like this are punishable by death.



Tattoos have more than just a symbolic meaning for russian prisoners. A body with no tattoos is a body with no identity, its essential nature is not displayed. Michelangelo said that he was not the sculptor of his last creations - he merely used his hammer and chisel to help the forms inside the marble break out. In the same way the tattoo artist's knife brings the prisoner's story, his attitudes, his place in the thieves' family, his true self, to the surface.