THE PROMISE : Tuesday 27th June 2017.

'THE PROMISE' which I saw last week is Directed and Co-Written by Terry George whose previous credits include 'Reservation Road' and 'Hotel Rwanda'. Here he turns his attention to the last days of the Ottoman Empire and the Armenian Genocide, which occurred between 1915 and 1922, marking the beginning of one hundred years of modern genocide by launching the world into a cycle of violence and denial that has resulted in millions of lives lost, destroyed and displaced. The film Premiered at TIFF in early September last year, was released in the US in late April, and has been a Box Office bomb taking just US$9M of its US$90M budget outlay. The film has however, been praised for its historical accuracy and for not downplaying the enormity of the lesser known Armenian Genocide that took place.

This is the story of Mikael (Oscar Isaac), a small village dwelling apothecary and an aspiring gifted medical student who has designs on graduating from medical school in the big city and turning his chosen career path to good use back in his Armenian home village of Sirun, in the south-east of the Ottoman Empire. In order to fund his way through medical school and graduate as a fully fledged Doctor, he betroths himself to the daughter of a wealthy neighbour in the village for a dowry of 400 gold coins. This will give him the fees necessary to continue his training at the Imperial Medical Academy in Constantinople and fund his living expenses for the two years he is away. And so Michael leaves the comfort of Sirun and heads to the big city, Constantinople, fresh faced, energetic and fully of hope for his future.

Upon arriving in Constantinople, he meets Emre (Marwan Kenzari) on his first day at the Medical Academy. Emre is the son of a high ranking Turkish official, and also a medical student, although only because he wanted to dodge the draft into the Turkish Army, much to the chagrin of his father.

Through Mikael's wealthy Uncle, he is introduced to Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), an Armenian woman raised and educated in Paris and from a village not too far way from his own. Ana is romantically involved with American Reporter for the Associated Press Chris Myers (Christian Bale), and the two share a co-dependence upon each other - he for his reporting and she for her artistic sketches of his reported subject matter. With the threat of war looming, Myers is in Constantinople observing and reporting on the German influence in Turkey, and the mounting unrest amongst certain factions of the population. Myers has clout as a famous and highly regarded photo-journalist dedicated to exposing political truth.

Fairly quickly it becomes evident that there is a chemistry between Mikael and Ana, and soon their affections for each other become apparent to Chris. All of this starts to unfold as international tensions begin to boil over with the onset of WWI, and it becomes clear that Turkey intends to side with Germany. As compulsory conscription looms ever closer into the Ottoman Army, Mikael manages to avoid being signed up with Emre's help using the clout of his father's position to secure a medical student exemption.

However, Mikael's avoidance of the conscript is short-lived, as he soon discovers that his Uncle has been imprisoned during the dissident round-ups of April 1915. In his attempts to save his Uncle by bribing an official with his remaining stash of gold coins, Mikael is his himself detained, and sent off to a prison labour camp. We then fast forward six months to see the Nazi-like led camp and those prisoners doing the hard labour by laying train tracks across rocky mountain terrain for their captors, the Turks.

Eventually, Mikael manages to escape as a result of a fortunate occurrence involving weeping sticks of dynamite, a prisoner willing to give his life, and the close proximity to the ensuing explosion of many Turkish soldiers. Finally, Mikael makes his way back to his village, only to find it a shadow of its former self with the Turks having turned violently on their Armenian fellows. His parents are still alive, but are now poverty stricken having been robbed of all their wealth and valuables by the marauding Turkish Army. His mother persuades him to proceed with his promise to marry Maral (Angela Sarafyan) the girl he is betrothed to despite Mikael professing his love for Ana in Constantinople. But with the passing of time and their changed circumstances he doesn't even know if Ana still lives. And so he goes through with the marriage in a hurried ceremony in the mountains where they live in a log cabin built by his father as sleeping quarters for hired farm hands. Soon enough Maral falls pregnant, but suffering from sickness Mikael takes his wife back to the village to be tended for by his mother and father. There he learns that Ana and Chris are at a Red Cross station close by, and so he leaves to seek their help in securing an escape from the ever increasing threat to their lives at the hands of the Turks.

The Red Cross are managing escape missions for orphans across the mountains and to a nearby port where passage by ship is planned to take them to safe haven. They head back to Sirun to retrieve Mikael's family en route to the port, only to be greeted by a bloodbath of massacred bodies laid strewn across a riverbank on the outskirts of the village. Among them is the slain bodies of Mikael's father and Maral, with the unborn child ripped from her stomach. His mother is still alive.  Mikael's grieving is interrupted by passing Turkish soldiers who give chase.

The group split with Chris leading them off astray so enabling Mikael and Ana  to escape with the carriage load of young orphans. Chris is however, soon overcome and captured. He produces official papers but these are dismissed by the soldiers who take him back to Constantinople where he is imprisoned for spying - a crime punishable by death. Emre, now an officer in the Ottoman Army, visits Chris in his cell and pleads with him to sign a confession to save his life, but Chris has firm beliefs and staunch moral standards and rips up the document - sealing his fate.

At the eleventh hour, American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau (James Cromwell) gets involved with his Turkish counterpart and negotiates Chris's release, allowing for him to be deported to Malta. Emre however, was involved in contacting Morgenthau covertly, and is found out by more higher ranking officials, and consequently is shot by firing squad. Upon arriving in Malta, Chris boards the French Navy cruiser 'Guichen' under the captaincy of Admiral Fournet (Jean Reno) as it launches for the Ottoman coastline.

Meanwhile Ana and Mikael encounter a large group of Armenian refugees heading into the mountains to escape the advancing Turks. Armed with limited guns and makeshift weapons, the refugees are determined that they will fight to the death. The resistance fought off the advancing Turks for fifty-three days in all on mount Musa Dagh until Allied warships, most notably the French 3rd squadron in the Mediterranean sighted the survivors, just as ammunition and food provisions were running short. French and British ships, beginning with the Guichen, evacuated 4,200 men, women and children from Musa Dagh, amidst heavy artillery fire from the Ottoman Army, which Chris, Mikael, Ana and the orphans all come under attack from, and not without casualty. The warships then transported them to safety in Port Said in Egypt.

This film has a strong compelling story to tell and its an important one, that is still controversially denied by the Turkish people to this day. Therefore, all credit to Terry George for bringing this story to the big screen - it is just a shame that so many film goers have chosen to elect with their feet and their money to stay away from the cinemas, or watch something else. Maybe its because this tragic story of the Armenian Genocide which claimed one and a half million lives is wrapped up in candy floss and sugar coated in a melodramatic, elongated love triangle that detracts from the subject matter  of real historical and undeniable importance. The production values are strong and with the principle cast of Bale and Isaac and up & comer Le Bon, we could have expected a lot more, but here the sum of the parts is not greater than the whole. Twenty minutes less running time, an abbreviated love triangle and more about the atrocities (think 'Schindler's List' here) and we'd be talking about a different film altogether.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-