The Promise (2016 film)

Premise

A love triangle develops between an Armenian medical student Michael, an American journalist based in Paris named Christopher and an Armenian-born woman raised in France, Ana, during the final days of the Ottoman Empire in 1914.

Plot

Michael lives in a small Armenian village in historic Armenia, on the eastern part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and he promises himself to a rich village woman to get 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople to become a medical student where he befriends a son of a powerful general. Christopher (Christian Bale) is a reporter for the Associated Press and he brings along Ana, an Armenian woman raised in Paris. Michael falls in love with Ana. The Ottoman Empire starts to round up Armenians, initiating the Armenian Genocide. Michael is able to escape by avoiding enlistment in the army under a medical student exemption with the help of his friend. However, he is later sent to prison camps after trying to save his wealthy uncle who has been imprisoned. Michael escapes the camps, and makes it back to his village. He goes to the mountain cabin with his wife, where she soon becomes pregnant. However, due to the difficult pregnancy his wife is brought back to the village. Michael hears that Ana and Christopher are in a nearby Red Cross facility and he goes there to help his family escape. While heading back to his village to help them escape, the Ottomans massacre his family and the whole village; his mother survives. Michael and Ana and a large group of refugees fight off the Ottoman army on a mountain and escape on the back side to the coast as the French Navy comes to their rescue.

Cast

Production

Filming began in Autumn 2015 in Portugal, Malta, and Spain, with the shooting scheduled to last until December. Reshoots took place in New York in May and June 2016, ending in early June.

Release

The film premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2016. Shortly after, Open Road Films acquired distribution rights to the film, and set an April 28, 2017, release date. The release date was later changed to April 21, 2017.

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 31% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 4.1/10. On Metacritic the film has a score of 38 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Benjamin Lee of The Guardian gave the film 3 stars (out of 5) and called it an "often soapy but well-intentioned and extravagantly mounted epic." Pietro A. Shakarian, writing for The Nation, gave a more favorable review: "The Promise captures the magnitude of this history in a way that no prior film on the genocide has done before. With its sweeping cinematography, powerful acting, and all-encompassing story, it is a truly epic work that effectively and humanely conveys the story of the tragedy."

Ara Sarafian, a leading historian of the Armenian Genocide, praised the film for its historical accuracy. "The key themes were historically accurate," he said. "The producers did not take license to go beyond the historical material at hand yet they managed to capture much of the enormity of the Armenian genocide."

Harout Kassabian of The Armenian Weekly said the film will help the world will recognize the trauma of the genocide as it has long been felt by the Armenians: "The personal connection developed with the characters helps deepen the empathy felt by the audience."

IMDB public votes controversy

By the end of October 2016, before its official release and after only three pre-release screenings in September 2016 at the Toronto International Film Festival to small audiences, IMDb had registered over 86,000 ratings for the film. 55,126 of which were one-star and 30,639 of which were 10-star, with very few ratings falling anywhere in between. The majority of these votes had been cast by males outside of the US. By mid-November the total was over 91,000 votes, with over 57,000 one-star votes. Commentators assessed that these were mostly votes by people who had never seen the film, and that the one star voting was part of an orchestrated campaign by Armenian-genocide deniers to downrate the movie, which had then initiated an Armenian response to highly rate the movie. As of 9 March 2017 the film holds a rating of 4.1/10 on IMDb.