Somehow, and with a surprising minimum of fuss, David Cronenberg went from being Canadian cinema’s most notorious bad boy to being one of its elder statesmen. Mention this to Cronenberg and he laughs. “I don’t think I’ve changed at all.” Cronenberg’s latest, Eastern Promises, explores many of the same themes as his last film, A History of Violence — it’s a exploration of morality and memory, wrapped in the cut-and-thrust clothes of a crime thriller. A London midwife (Naomi Watts) delivers a child to a dying mother — and in the search for the child’s surviving family, begins translating her diary; Viggo Mortensen plays the thuggish driver and Russian emigre tasked with getting the diary back at all costs. Cinematical had the pleasure of speaking with Cronenberg on a pre-Toronto press stop in San Francisco about working with Viggo Mortensen again, London’s bustling modern cityscape and why it’s not so much that he’s moved past making horror films than it is how the genre’s fallen behind. You can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:

You can listen to the interview by clicking here.

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