★★★
On the surface a historical film about a love triangle set in Ottoman Turkey, The Promise is actually a polemic about the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks at the turn of the century. One of the film’s strengths is the way Terry George evokes the era, showing how the Armenians are integrated into Ottoman life. We see Armenians going to parties, attending schools and doing business shoulder-to-shoulder with Turks. We observe this life from the point-of-view of the Armenians, mostly from Mikael’s perspective, so we also get to go a little deeper in Armenian life, visiting a church and spending time in a villa owned by an Armenian businessman. In the beginning of the film, the Ottoman world we experience is vital and cosmopolitan on both Christian and Muslim sides.
As we begin to notice the growing anti-Armenian sentiment, the film makes an important shift. Soon we no longer see what’s happening in society in general but become locked exclusively into what’s happening to the Armenians. We experience a series of gripping Armenian persecutions and losses, from discriminatory conscription at Mikael’s medical school to the destruction of his uncle’s business in Istanbul. Armenians begin to vanish into prisons and become the victims of street violence. We follow Mikael though brutal experiences and many personal losses, only leaving him so we can join an American reporter Chris Myers as he observes the wholesale evictions of Armenian villages as well as massacres of the people. The narrow perspective points to George’s limited directorial purpose in the film, to recreate the injustice of the Armenian genocide.
With Promise having such a tight polemical purpose, it’s no surprise that that its love story receives cursory treatment. Despite convincing acting by Oscar Isaac as Mikael, we feel little real emotion or engagement in the romantic triangle. Charlotte Le Bon’s Ana often looks like a fashion model and doesn’t sell us on her attraction to either Mikael or Chris. And for his part, Christian Bale’s Chris doesn’t seem to have feelings for anything. He shows so little warmth or attraction to Ana that it’s hard to accept they would love each other, and Bale plays Chris as so emotionless that he doesn’t even project feelings about the horrors he’s documenting. The most that Bale gives us in Chris is a cold, self-righteous anger at the genocide. And Chris’ posture echoes the larger purpose of Promise, to focus on the horror of the killings rather than on the stresses of the love triangle.
As a gesture of being inclusive, Promise gives us a couple of Turks who resist the growing carnage. A governor, for example, takes a major risk in warning an orphanage that its Armenian children will be slaughtered. He even allows Chris to leave the area despite an arrest warrant out for the American. And Marwan Kenzari as Emri conveys an extraordinary vulnerability and decency toward his American and Armenian friends. It’s unfortunate that George isn’t interested in this side of his story because theirs would certainly have among the most interesting in the film.
While the thrust here is to dramatize the Armenian genocide, it’s hard to watch Promise and not think of our contemporary political situation. How could a cosmopolitan, tolerant culture suddenly turn on a segment of its population, as happened with the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey? Promise doesn’t address the factors that led to the horror in Turkey, but it’s a reminder of how fragile a multicultural environment can be. It's not much of a love story at all.
Atlanta Film Festival: Sunday April 2, 7 pm at the Plaza Theater.
On the surface a historical film about a love triangle set in Ottoman Turkey, The Promise is actually a polemic about the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks at the turn of the century. One of the film’s strengths is the way Terry George evokes the era, showing how the Armenians are integrated into Ottoman life. We see Armenians going to parties, attending schools and doing business shoulder-to-shoulder with Turks. We observe this life from the point-of-view of the Armenians, mostly from Mikael’s perspective, so we also get to go a little deeper in Armenian life, visiting a church and spending time in a villa owned by an Armenian businessman. In the beginning of the film, the Ottoman world we experience is vital and cosmopolitan on both Christian and Muslim sides.
As we begin to notice the growing anti-Armenian sentiment, the film makes an important shift. Soon we no longer see what’s happening in society in general but become locked exclusively into what’s happening to the Armenians. We experience a series of gripping Armenian persecutions and losses, from discriminatory conscription at Mikael’s medical school to the destruction of his uncle’s business in Istanbul. Armenians begin to vanish into prisons and become the victims of street violence. We follow Mikael though brutal experiences and many personal losses, only leaving him so we can join an American reporter Chris Myers as he observes the wholesale evictions of Armenian villages as well as massacres of the people. The narrow perspective points to George’s limited directorial purpose in the film, to recreate the injustice of the Armenian genocide.
With Promise having such a tight polemical purpose, it’s no surprise that that its love story receives cursory treatment. Despite convincing acting by Oscar Isaac as Mikael, we feel little real emotion or engagement in the romantic triangle. Charlotte Le Bon’s Ana often looks like a fashion model and doesn’t sell us on her attraction to either Mikael or Chris. And for his part, Christian Bale’s Chris doesn’t seem to have feelings for anything. He shows so little warmth or attraction to Ana that it’s hard to accept they would love each other, and Bale plays Chris as so emotionless that he doesn’t even project feelings about the horrors he’s documenting. The most that Bale gives us in Chris is a cold, self-righteous anger at the genocide. And Chris’ posture echoes the larger purpose of Promise, to focus on the horror of the killings rather than on the stresses of the love triangle.
As a gesture of being inclusive, Promise gives us a couple of Turks who resist the growing carnage. A governor, for example, takes a major risk in warning an orphanage that its Armenian children will be slaughtered. He even allows Chris to leave the area despite an arrest warrant out for the American. And Marwan Kenzari as Emri conveys an extraordinary vulnerability and decency toward his American and Armenian friends. It’s unfortunate that George isn’t interested in this side of his story because theirs would certainly have among the most interesting in the film.
While the thrust here is to dramatize the Armenian genocide, it’s hard to watch Promise and not think of our contemporary political situation. How could a cosmopolitan, tolerant culture suddenly turn on a segment of its population, as happened with the Jews in Germany or the Armenians in Turkey? Promise doesn’t address the factors that led to the horror in Turkey, but it’s a reminder of how fragile a multicultural environment can be. It's not much of a love story at all.
Atlanta Film Festival: Sunday April 2, 7 pm at the Plaza Theater.
