The Promise (2016 film)
The Promise is a 2016 American epic historical war drama film directed by Terry George, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Robin Swicord. Set in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the film stars Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale. The plot is about a love triangle that develops between Mikael, an Armenian medical student, Chris, an American journalist, and Ana, an Armenian-born woman raised in France, immediately before and during the Armenian genocide.
The Promise premiered on September 11, 2016, at the Toronto International Film Festival and was released by Open Road Films in the United States on April 21, 2017, on the 102nd anniversary of the week the genocide started. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing just $12 million against its $90 million budget and losing Open Road over $100 million. However, the studio noted the main purpose of the film was to bring attention to the story, not make money, with George saying that "audiences learn more from films today than they do from history books." The film also features "The Promise", which was the final single released by Chris Cornell, who died less than a month after the film's U.S. release.
Plot
Mikael Boghosian is an apothecary who lives in the small Armenian village of Siroun in the southeast part of Turkey, within the Ottoman Empire. In order to help pay the expenses for medical school, he promises to marry Maral, the daughter of an affluent neighbor, receiving 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople and attend the Imperial School of Medicine.There, Mikael befriends Emre, the son of a high-ranking Ottoman official. Through his wealthy uncle, he also meets Ana Khesarian, an Armenian woman raised in Paris, who is involved with an American reporter for the Associated Press, Chris Myers. Mikael falls in love with Ana just as international tensions begin to rise with the outbreak of World War I.
Mikael temporarily manages to avoid conscription into the Ottoman Army through a medical student exemption with the help of Emre. When he, with Emre's help, tries to save his uncle from imprisonment during the roundups of April 24, 1915, he is detained and sent to a labor camp, while Emre is conscripted as a consequence for helping Mikael a second time after his father warned him not to.
Mikael eventually escapes the camp. Returning to his village, he finds that the townspeople of Turkish background have violently turned on their fellow townspeople of Armenian background. His parents, and particularly his mother, persuade him to marry Maral and seek refuge in a remote mountain cabin, where she soon becomes pregnant.
A difficult pregnancy leads Mikael to bring his wife back to the care of his mother in the village. There he learns that Ana and Christopher are at a nearby Red Cross facility, so he goes to seek their help for his family to escape the imminent Turkish threat.
Departing the mission with a group of orphans, they head back to Siroun to retrieve Mikael's family. Along the way, however, they encounter the site of a massacre. It soon becomes clear it's all of Siroun's inhabitants, including Mikael's family except his mother and cousin Yeva, killed by Ottoman troops. Mikael's wife is found with their unborn child cut out from her body.
Chris is captured by Ottoman soldiers and sent back to Constantinople, charged with being a spy for the Allied Powers and, while held at Selimiye Barracks, slated for execution by the authorities. With the help of Emre, and through the intercession of American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Chris is released and deported to Malta. Once there, he boards the French cruiser Guichen, as it prepares to set sail along the Ottoman coast. Emre's role in helping to save Chris is discovered and he is executed by firing squad.
Escaping pursuit, Mikael, Ana, and the orphans join a large group of refugees determined to fight off the Ottoman Army on Mount Musa Dagh. As they fend off repeated assaults, Mikael's mother succumbs to her wounds and is buried on the mountain. The refugees hold on long enough to escape on the back side to the coast as the Guichen comes to evacuate them. But as the lifeboats return to the ship, a Turkish artillery barrage throws Ana and Yeva, the young daughter of Mikael's uncle, overboard. Mikael jumps in after them and is able to rescue Yeva, but Ana drowns.
In a voice over, Mikael recounts that he adopted Yeva and together they settled in Watertown, Massachusetts while Chris was killed reporting the Spanish Civil War in 1938. During Yeva's wedding reception in 1942, with the now grown Armenian orphans in attendance, Mikael presides over a toast, wishing good fortune to their families and future generations to come.
Cast
- Oscar Isaac as Mikael Boghosian, an Armenian medical student from the town of Siroun. Pietro A. Shakarian wrote in The Nation that Mikael "represents the aspirations of Ottoman Armenians" and that he "is almost like a hero in a work by one of the great Armenian national writers like Raffi or Khachatur Abovian".
- Charlotte Le Bon as Ana Khesarian, an Armenian artist who was raised in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne. George stated that Ana represents a foreign-born "avant-garde, socially liberated woman" to Chris while she is drawn to Mikael as she rediscovers her Armenian roots. George experienced difficulty in casting Ana's role and indicated that he chose Le Bon after seeing her in a Canadian fashion magazine and meeting her in person as she would be able to play "a strong and independent character who could attract two very different types of men."
- Christian Bale as Christopher Myers, a world-renowned American journalist with the Associated Press. Chris is a composite character of "a number of eyewitness reporters who witnessed sections of the genocide." Christian Bale joined the film production prior to the selection of George as the director. Bale studied Lincoln Steffens and other period journalists, such as Christopher Hitchens, as well as meeting with people who studied the genocide.
- Marwan Kenzari as Emre Ogan, a notorious Turkish playboy and son of a diplomat. Ara Sarafian, director of the Gomidas Institute in London and a leading historian of the Armenian genocide, stated that it was "historically important" to have characters representing "righteous Muslims", including Emre. Shakarian states that Emre "represents the friendships that existed between Armenians and Muslims before the genocide and those Muslims who, later, went out of their way to save their Armenian friends and neighbors."
- Shohreh Aghdashloo as Marta Boghosian, Mikael's mother.
- Angela Sarafyan as Maral, Mikael’s betrothed in Siroun.
- Daniel Giménez Cacho as Reverend Dikran Antreassian, a clergyman from Bassek who joins the resistance at Musa Dagh.
- Tom Hollander as Garin, a former circus clown who is held prisoner in a labor camp.
- Numan Acar as Mustafa, a Turk working for the American Red Cross driving orphans to safety.
- Igal Naor as Mesrob Boghosian, Mikael’s wealthy uncle who owns a fabric store in Constantinople.
- Milene Mayer Gutierrez as Yeva Boghosian, one of Mesrob and Lena’s two daughters.
- * Sofia Black-D'Elia plays an older Yeva in the film's epilogue.
- Tamer Hassan as Faruk Pasha, an official in the Ottoman army.
- Rade Šerbedžija as Stephan, the Mayor of Bassek, who leads the Armenian residents of Bassek to safety.
- Alicia Borrachero as Lena Boghosian, Mesrob’s wife.
- Abel Folk as Harut, Maral’s wealthy father.
- Jean Reno as the French naval Admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet
- James Cromwell as the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau Sr.
- Kevork Malikyan as Vartan Boghosian, Mikael’s father.
- Stewart Scudamore as Ogan Pasha, Emre’s father, a Turkish diplomat.
Production
Financing, casting and research
The story of The Promise was based on an unproduced screenplay titled Anatolia by Robin Swicord, though Terry George completely rewrote the screenplay. Swicord says, "There’s some very fragmentary bits of my story that are in there, but he invented the Christian Bale character and changed the other characters. I had a medical student in my screenplay, but he wasn’t at all like the character in The Promise." George stated that he added Chris and lengthened the storyline to illustrate the scope of the genocide. The original script only focused on Mikael and his family.George, who directed human rights-related films, became interested in the Armenian genocide as a filming topic after reading chapters about it in A Problem from Hell while doing research for Hotel Rwanda. George traveled to Armenia and Turkey to do further research on the topic. He became involved with this project after reading Swicord's script, which his agent had sent to him.
The entire $100 million budget was donated by Armenian-American Kirk Kerkorian, as Kerkorian did not have expectations of the film generating profits. the budget was the highest of any film about the Armenian genocide. The donation of the budget meant that the Turkish government would have been unable to pressure the studio into canceling the film, as it had done in the past with other productions. George stated that the film "would not exist" without Kerkorian, who gave approval to the script prior to his death in 2015, but did not live to see it filmed and finished. Kerkorian and co-producer Esrailian, the latter of whom had great-grandparents who lived through the genocide, organized Survival Pictures as the production company. Esrailian became interested in studying the Armenian genocide while a university undergraduate, and received a master's degree in public health, a degree which he said enhanced his understanding of demography.
Bale and Isaac were cast in June 2015, while Le Bon, Cromwell, Reno, Aghdashloo and Giménez-Cachowere were all confirmed by September.
Esrailian said that he used a romance plot in order to "use old fashioned storytelling" to immerse an unfamiliar audience into the plot, hoping to avoid making the film only "a history lesson" and making a "throwback to cinema" like Doctor Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia; in another interview he also cited Casablanca. Esrailian stated that he would have encountered less difficulty producing "a straightforward genocide story" but chose to use the romance angle anyway.
George prepared for the film by reading Armenian Golgotha, which discusses the extent of and survival of the genocide; and The Burning Tigris, which discusses journalists documenting the genocide. George said that he deliberately used a 1970s production style and that he intended to reach the average common movie-goer, using the analogy of "is 'Hotel Rwanda' going to play in Peoria? Will it be understood? Is it main stream enough?" George also stated that he extensively historical details to ensure they reflected what happened in reality. Crow stated that the film reminded him of David Lean's works, and Esrailian responded by stating the production crew had discussed that style of filming.
George chose to make the film with English as its single medium as he felt it would be too confusing for a moviegoer to manage hearing multiple languages spoken throughout the film. The final scene of a toast is given in Armenian.