“The Promise” is a big-budget, professional production that looks at World War I and how the Ottoman Empire mistreated the native Armenian population in Turkey. It is not a common topic in the movies to delve into the roots of genocide and ethnic cleansing. But Terry George has written and directed this subject before (in “Hotel Rwanda”) about the ethnic killings in Rwanda in 1994. With this movie, he makes a strident point of the cruelty of the Turks regarding the minority Armenians.
Prior to the start of World War I, many small villages in Turkey had many Armenians, and from one village came Mikael (Oscar Isaac). He wanted to study medicine, so he agreed to marry into a wealthy family and use the dowry money for schooling in Constantinople. While he is there, he stays with his rich uncle. He hires a young woman named Ana (Charlotte Le Bon) to tutor his children. Ana is Armenian, but she has grown up with her father in France. Makael and Ana meet, and both are attracted to each other.
Ana spends her time with Chris Myers (Christian Bale), who is an American reporter for the Associated Press. He is there to cover the tensions as the world comes to war. Once that war is declared, Turkey finds an ally in Germany. Turkish government officials find it easy to tighten down on all non-Turks, and they are especially hostile to the Armenians. Many villages are ransacked, and all non-Turks are jailed. Mikael tries to get a student exemption, but he instead gets put into a work camp.
Mikael finds a way to escape and he gets back his village. His mother Marta (Shohreh Aghdashloo) makes him marry the girl in the village he had agreed to marry. Mikael was secretly in love with Ana, but he knows he must make good on his promise. Turkish troops get deeper into the outlaying lands to scour and destroy more villages, and Mikael’s village is on the list.
Ana and Chris Myers had spent time fleeing the chaos in Constantinople. They found a missionary clinic in the hills, where the pastor in charge was secretly taking orphans to a nearby port and getting the children out of Turkey. Mikael’s wife is pregnant and she needs medical help, so they wind up at that same clinic. He again meets Ana and Chris, but he says he must stay with his family and the village. But the villagers are slaughtered, and there is nothing there for Mikael.
They travel to find the village with the port and the boats for the children. But the Turkish forces had destroyed the port and the village, and the people are wandering out into the hills. Chris is captured the Turks and it takes a visit by the U.S. Ambassador (James Cromwell) to get his free. Chris runs into a French destroyer captain (Jean Reno) and convinces him to use his artillery power to fight off the Turks. That will give the people fleeing the country a chance to stay alive.
The subject matter is difficult, because war enters Turkey and gives them all the room they need to quietly exterminate the Armenian people. There is a lot at stake; the story of the three people on the screen is shadow of what misfortune hits the country as a whole. The three main characters are mostly well-defined. Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, and Christian Bale play the roles with a lot of empathy for the pain all around them. They are at times proud, and frightened, and shell-shocked, and worn down and then happy to meet up again. Love is found and lost in the shadows of war.
The movie is paced a little slow in some area, and the overall length might have been cut down a little bit. There a lot of characters over the course of the movie and many of those who are the main group or in the immediate surrounding group, they all tend to blur into a fuzzy stereotype. The Turks and almost all bad, and the Germans are all mean and stuck-up. The occasional American is noble and good-hearted, and the French need to be talked into doing the right thing.
There are some minor flaws in the movie. But in the long run, it is an honest and heartfelt effort to tell a story about World War I that normally gets pushed aside. But don’t expect the movie to be a box office smash (in Turkey).
