The Promise: Less-than-satisfying paint-by-numbers take on the Armenian Genocide

What does one know of the 1915 Armenian Genocide and how it's a piece of a bigger puzzle of World War I? And is a major Hollywood release with slick production values, lush photography, gorgeous stars the place to learn anything? Or shall we just let the gore and barbarism entertain us?

In this 100th anniversary year of the beginning of America’s entry into World War I, there have been several films released that try in their unique ways to get a grip on this war to end all wars. Recently The Ottoman Lieutenant and Frantz have both explored the stupidity and slaughter of this horrific conflagration. Now comes The Promise.

When Michael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), an apothocary-cum-medical student, meets Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), their shared Armenian heritage sparks an attraction that explodes into a romantic rivalry between Michael and Ana’s boyfriend Chris Myers (Christian Bale), a famous American photojournalist dedicated to exposing political truth. As the Ottoman Empire crumbles into war-torn chaos, the Turks form an alliance with Germany and the Empire turns violent against the ethnic minority, where just years before, the Armenian Christians and Turkish Muslims lived peacefully side by side. Now the conflicting passions of Michael, Ana and Chris must be deferred while they join forces to get their people to safety and survive themselves.

There is an stolid earnestness to this movie, albeit sincere, hard working, well intentioned, but it’s a predictable paint-by-numbers effort. Show the Armenian Christian peasants. Check. Show Constantinople from the sea. Check. Show the fez bedecked Turks. Check. Bring in the beautiful people. Check. OK, next, let’s create a love triangle. Check. More complications and close calls. Check. Now the genocide. Check. See who's left standing. Movie over. Sweep up the popcorn.

The director is Terry George, known for his masterful and powerful Hotel Rwanda. This is his 2004 historical drama on the Rwandan Genocide, that 1994 civil war between the Hutu and the Tutsi peoples. Shift the time frame back 80 years and move from Africa to Europe, Rwanda to Armenia, and once again you have another story of internecine butchery. Still I expected more when he tells the story of this oft-denied massacre, at least by the Turks, where barbaric ethnic cleansing (such a pleasant, affable euphemism) scoured away one and a half million Armenians.

As the movie's tag line says, Empires fall, Love survives. Maybe. I would add: Spreadsheets triumph. It's all very perfunctory, every move loudly telegraphed, every character with a predictable slot to fill. Businesslike though much of this movie is as we move bullet point by bullet point to the bitter end, its emotion cannot be denied. But is that enough? No. I fault screenwriter Robin Swicord for this failed epic. Maybe the story is indeed just too big to capture, so once again the movies resort to the cliched love triangle, a rather flimsy hook on which to hang the deaths of, again, this time in digits, 1,500,000 Armenians.

There's something else I found oddly off-putting and that's the  widescreen photography of cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe. He shoots in such ultra-high definition that I felt at times I was watching virtual reality, not real human beings, but surreal people in unearthly landscapes. I realize the inherent contradiction in that observation for movies themselves are a step, or two or more, removed from reality, but with this ultra-high def, enhanced color and resolution, slick and glossy and juiced with pixels, we're now even further removed from reality. The bomb blasts shook the theatre with rumbling low frequency tremors, adding to this bizarre immersive, almost interactive display of movie making might.

But it's hard to develop any empathy or sympathy for the proceedings when the glossy images and surround sound effect create a  barrier to true emotion. I will admit to more than once thinking this historical melodrama has morphed into a new genre of Genocide Porn.

William Saroyan, prominent novelist, playwright and short story writer, himself Armenian-American, wrote furiously and defiantly of the mistreatment of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks: "I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose music is unheard, whose prayers are no longer uttered. Go ahead, destroy this race. Let us say that it is again 1915. There is war in the world. Destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them from their homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. Burn their houses and their churches. See if they will not live again. See if they will not laugh again. See if the race will not live again when two of them meet in a beer parlor, twenty years later, and laugh, and speak in their tongue. Go ahead, see if you can do anything about it. See if you can stop them from mocking the big ideas of the world, you sons of bitches, a couple of Armenians talking in the world, go ahead and try to destroy them."

This manifesto is some serious shit, and it must have been the guiding principle behind every frame of this movie.

This article appears in Apr 20-27, 2017.