Top critics on “The Promise” - An inspiring epic or a sloggy melodrama?

Top critics on “The Promise” - An inspiring epic or a sloggy melodrama?

PanARMENIAN.Net - “The Promise”, a historical drama set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide, hits theaters in Armenia on Thursday, April 27. The film has sparked a lot of debate and attracted massive media coverage as top critics from the globe’s most influential magazines and newspapers took the time to share their very own impressions from the movie.

The war drama centers on a love story involving a medical student (Oscar Isaac), a journalist (Christian Bale), and the Armenian woman (Charlotte Le Bon) who steals their hearts. All three find themselves grappling with the Ottomans’ decision to begin rounding up and persecuting Armenians during the first genocide of the 20th century.

Produced by late businessman Kirk Kerkorian, the Armenian Genocide epic -- which currently has a rating of 47% on Rotten Tomatoes -- made it to the big screen in the United States to fetch just $4.1 million over the first weekend.

The majority of opinions agree that “The Promise” deserves credit for shining light on a crime that’s denied to this day, that Isaac is the acting standout, but that a great subject goes kind of unnoticed behind the love story.

The Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers gives credit to the producers, including the self-made Armenian-American billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who died in 2015 at 98, for treating the film as a passion project.

“Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, still refuses to recognize these mass killings as genocide – as does the U.S. The Promise has no such qualms, however, allowing us to bear witness to atrocities that foreshadow the rise of Hitler and the existential horror of the Holocaust,” Travers says.

In a review of its own, Variety says that the fictional love story, which is designed to dramatize the Ottoman Empire's horrific treatment of its Armenian citizens in 1915, is an epic bore.

“The events being considered deserve better than a sloggy melodrama in which the tragedy of a people is forced to take a back seat to a not especially compelling love triangle,” chief film critic Peter Debruge writes in Variety.

The New York Times, though recognizing the great contribution of Oscar Issac and Christian Bale, says the film approaches the Armenian Genocide with too much calculation and not nearly enough heat.

“...We never forget for one second that we’re watching actors in fancy dress; behind the curtain of cattle cars and starving workers, above the noise of the explosions, we can hear the moviemaking machinery clank and whir,” author Jeannette Carsoulis says.

According to The Associated Press, the Armenian Genocide is a curiously unexplored moment in modern history, cinematically speaking, and that fact alone makes "The Promise " intriguing enough.

"The Promise" is a sprawling and handsome epic set around the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, AP’s Lindsey Bahr says, adding, however, that despite the best of intentions, “the film fails to properly explain and contextualize both what led to that disgraceful episode, which Turkey to this day denies.”

Deadline’s Pete Hammond hails the movie as inspiring and sweeping. With a reported budget of $90 million-$100 million, Hammond says,it is heartening to see anyone care to even attempt a movie on this scale and subject matter these days.

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

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