The Promise Archives

The Economist: “The Promise” shinеs light on Armenian Genocide

April 28, 2017 By administrator

The road that an idea takes from the screenwriter’s mind to your local multiplex is besieged by obstacles political, financial and practical in nature. The average blockbuster has to contend with budget fights and studio meddling; a film like “The Promise” is even trickier to bring to the screen. A sweeping historical drama about a national tragedy, it is the sort of movie that Hollywood used to love. But for more than a century, writers and studios have turned their faces away from the story. In many ways, the film succeeds simply by exploring an event that others will not, The Economist said.

Taking place in 1915, “The Promise” centres on a passionate love triangle but is set against the genocide perpetrated against Armenians by officials of the Ottoman Empire. Oscar Isaac plays a humble Armenian medical student who tries to escape the massacre and save his family, while falling in love with an American dance instructor (Charlotte Le Bon) thereby earning a rivalry with her journalist boyfriend (Christian Bale). It is a stirring, if somewhat by-the-numbers depiction of heroism and survival in horrifying times, but it will not make the pantheon of great historical films. The love story is shallowly written, and the charismatic performers often wilt under the haunting scenes of systemic violence. Without a meaningful story on which to hang its historical events, the actors are left looking like vehicles for a history lesson.

Perhaps that is what the film-makers intended. “I didn’t know about the Armenian genocide before,” Mr Isaac noted. “I think, unfortunately, a lot of us in this country and in the West and all around the world have been purposefully kept in the dark about it.” Indeed, the most basic facts are in dispute. Turkey claims that 500,000 Armenians died of hunger and disease in the Syrian desert: they were being deported for supporting Russia in the first world war. Armenian survivors and their descendants place the number of dead at 1.5m, observing Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on April 24th every year. They argue that it was a systematic killing rather than an unfortunate side effect of poorly executed policy.

Today most scholars recognise the massacre as genocide, yet many Turkish officials still do not. Because Turkey is such an important ally to the West, neither has America, Britain or Israel. On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama pledged several times to reverse this policy of obfuscation, but he failed to do so once in office. This week, Donald Trump declined to categorise the events depicted in “The Promise” as genocide (though he was happy to call it “one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century”). America’s cultural machine is doing what its political machine will not.

“The Promise” is not for the squeamish. The slaughter is depicted with stark brutality and inarguable cruelty. Key characters are executed suddenly and without warning. A mother is shot in the head in front of her daughter. The population of an entire town is butchered in the matter of minutes, their bodies piled on top of each other beside a river. The film-makers do not use the word “genocide” until the film’s closing moments, but they do not need to: the actions are unmistakable. In one key scene, Isaac’s character discovers a train full of starving Armenians, a sequence often found in Holocaust films, placing these dreadful events in moral context for the audience.

Indeed, while other genocides have found their way to the screen, politics seems to have prevented “The Promise” from making it through the typical channels. Studios are unlikely to take a chance on an expensive film that might anger government officials and geopolitical allies unless they can guarantee that it will be profitable. The film was instead independently financed by the late Kirk Kerkorian, an American billionaire of Armenian descent, who created a film company—Survival Pictures—with the express purpose of educating the world about the Armenian genocide. He sunk $100m into “The Promise”, casting Bale and Isaac to attract an audience. The choice of Terry George as director was inspired, too: his “Hotel Rwanda” (2004) proved that he is able to handle complex conflicts with nuance and sensitivity.

Still, when the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016, it did not set the festival alight. Reviews were middling, and no major distributors were interested. Open Road, a smaller company that had shepherded “Spotlight” to a best picture Oscar, picked it up, decided it wasn’t good enough for awards season, and dumped it in the spring. In its opening weekend it grossed only $4.1m, a historically low amount for a film that cost $100m to make. Insiders speculate that it could gross around $20m worldwide, which by most accounts would make “The Promise” a spectacular failure.

But “The Promise” cannot be judged in purely economic terms, as Kekorian had little interest in making back his investment. Perhaps we should not judge it on purely artistic terms either. “The Promise” doesn’t seek to break ground: it was created in order to shine light on an oft-ignored historical event, and even with mediocre reviews and middling box-office figures it is achieving that aim. One day, if the history of the Armenian genocide is officially re-written, “The Promise” will have played a part, The Economist said.

Turkish trolls reportedly behind ticket scams/hacks against “The Promise”

April 22, 2017 By administrator

Social media users across Facebook have come to complain about ticket scams and hacks they experienced when trying to purchase tickets for the Armenian Genocide-themed movie “The Promise”, a representative from the Armenian National Committee of America said in a Facebook post.

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.

“Theaters in Boston, Framingham and Racine are experiencing in-advance sales, followed by late refund requests by purchasers of these sales, resulting in half-empty venues,” Aram Suren Hamparian said.

“Troubling, but not surprising, given Ankara’s shameful legacy of denial – from Capitol Hill all the way to Hollywood,” Hamparian said, suggesting that Turkish trolls are behind the scams.

One moviegoer said all the best seats were sold out as he was trying to buy tickets one week before the actual screening.

“I bought seats along the sides of the theater for my family. At the movie, every single one of the best seats were empty when we got there. When we asked the theater why a sold-out movie would have every single one of its best seats empty, they simply told us ‘it seems like those seats were purchased and refunded at the request of those who bought them.’ This way, people who want to see the movie cannot see it, yet the record will show at the end of the day that the movie was only barely half-full,” Dikran Kherlopian from Framingham said in a Facebook post.

As reported earlier, the picture appeared to be the target of a concerted campaign by Turkish cyber trolls who hoped to destroy it before it is widely released in cinemas.

The film currently has more than 120,000 reviews on IMDB.com, the online movie ranking website. That is almost double the number of reviews for Beauty and the Beast, which was released last month and seen by millions around the world.

Related links:

Aram Suren Hamparian’s Facebook

Jennifer Lopez joins #KeepThePromise campaign #ArmenianGenocide

April 22, 2017 By administrator

World-famous singer and actress Jennifer Lopez has joined the #KeepThePromise campaign.

“We should all care about the human rights, helping the refuges and children. My name is Jennifer Lopez and I vow to keep the promise to never forget,” the singer says at a video released on the social networks.

“The Promise” has also received the support of Elton John, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sylvester Stallone, Don Cheadle, Barbra Streisand, Cher, George and Amal Clooney, and other world-famous stars.

The director of “The Promise” is Oscar-winning director Terry George. The film stars Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac. It tells about the deportations and massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the period of the First World War.

“The Promise” follows a love triangle between Michael, a brilliant medical student, the beautiful and sophisticated Ana, and Chris – a renowned American journalist based in Paris.

Armenian genocide film’s IMDb page flooded with negative reviews even before release

April 22, 2017 By administrator

CTVNews.ca Staff

“The Promise,” a new Hollywood drama starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, hasn’t even been widely released yet, but that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from denouncing it with poor online ratings.

According to Sevag Belian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, that’s because the love story set in the time of mass killings of Armenians during the First World War, has become the target of a “politically motivated campaign.”

“It’s preposterous and ridiculous to say the least,” Belian told CTV News Channel on Thursday, a day before “The Promise” opens in theatres across North America.

The movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, but has only been screened a handful of times since then. Nevertheless, more than 126,000 people have rated it on IMDb, where it now has 5.4 stars out of 10.

The intense online reaction is fuelled by people who deny that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred during the First World War by the Ottoman Empire, parts of which formed modern-day Turkey.

Although numerous countries, including Canada, have formally acknowledged the mass killings as genocide, Turkey has refused to do so. The Turkish government maintains that Armenians were not targeted and that victims were collateral damage.

“The fact that thousands of people have surged onto the internet to write negative reviews about a film that they haven’t even seen is a clear indication that this is a politically motivated campaign,” Belian said.

“It’s unfortunately the result of years and years of denial of this atrocity by the Turkish government…Turkey, unfortunately, has not been ready to face its own history.”

Further fuelling the controversy was the March release of another movie that looks very similar to “The Promise.” Starring Ben Kingsley and Josh Hartnett, “The Ottoman Lieutenant” was made by Turkish producers and it highlights Turkey’s version of what happened during the First World War.

The makers of “The Promise” accused “The Ottoman Lieutenant” producers of trying to confuse the two movies.

“The Promise” was financed by the late American-Armenian billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian. Numerous Hollywood actors, as well as high-profile athletes and artistsincluding Cher, Kim Kardashian, Sylvester Stallone and Elton John have expressed their support for the film.

“The main message of ‘The Promise’ is that the suffering of the Armenians will not be forgotten,” Belian said. “After so many years, despite the continuous denial, it will not be forgotten.”

With files from The Associated Press

Source: http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/armenian-genocide-film-s-imdb-page-flooded-with-negative-reviews-even-before-release-1.3377178

‘The Promise’ Premieres In New York With Full Cast, Filmmakers & UN Dignitaries

April 21, 2017 By administrator

BY HOOSHERE BEZDIKIAN

NEW YORK—The highly anticipated feature film The Promise made its New York City debut on April 18th at the Paris Theater on 58th Street. The cast came out in full force as Christian Bale, Charlotte Le Bon, Oscar Isaac, Angela Sarafyan, James Cromwell and Chris Cornell made their way down the red carpet, alongside director/co-writer Terry George and several of the film’s producers, helmed by Eric Esrailian (Survival Pictures). Also in attendance was the evening’s co-host, Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations, and several other respected UN dignitaries.

Producer Eric Esrailian passionately described the mission of the film. “First of all, we wanted to tell a beautiful story and draw people in and raise awareness about the history of the Armenian people and the Armenian Genocide. We know that Armenians are not defined by genocide, but we want the genocide to be recognized and to not be forgotten.”

Set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise centers around a young Armenian woman, Ana Khesarian (Charlotte Le Bon) who leaves Paris to return to her homeland, where she gets entangled with AP journalist Chris Myers (Christian Bale) and then meets Armenian medical student, Mikael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), with whom she unexpectedly finds common ground. The film is, at its core, a love story—intentionally designed as such to make the film more appealing and accessible to broader movie-going audiences.

As James Cromwell, who plays Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire describes, “The love story is a way of getting people to begin the process, to feel for the characters, and then understand… can we not have compassion for people who are suffering around the world today? If we can have compassion for them, we can have compassion for the Armenians. If we can have compassion for the Armenians, then we have compassion for the Native Americans, and it goes on… it’s to open the heart.”

Esrailian addressed the importance of combatting the aggressive denial of the genocide on behalf of the Turkish government, while simultaneously depicting the resilience of the Armenian people. “As long as there is deep denial,” Esrailian explains, “our identity and the awareness of our culture will be viewed through a different lens, and it’s important to have that recognition and awareness while moving forward at the same time. Armenians have not stood still and hoped for genocide recognition. This is the mission and the message from the film – the take home is not the genocide – it’s where we are today; that Armenians have persevered, have thrived, have contributed to society.”

This very survival and perseverance is why Esrailian chose to include the Armenian flag in the official movie poster, a choice that some have criticized, citing that the flag didn’t exist in 1915. Esrailian rebuts, “That’s the type of thinking that doesn’t help the Armenian people. The genocide reflects the past, and the flag represents the future. When is the next time the Armenian flag is going to be on the poster of a major motion picture?”

Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan anticipated, “There will be many judgements about the artistic value of the film” and went on to emphasize “what is important about this film is that it’s a building block in the big construction of preventing genocide. This is a reminder that atrocities are still a risk before humanity. We as Armenians have experienced it, and I think we all bear moral duty before humanity to prevent genocide.”

To that same end, Esrailian stressed “Our goal is to draw attention to the parallels of human rights abuses in the world today, the relevance to the world today, to show that Armenians also care about other people all around the world, including in Turkey, and that people need to learn the lessons from the Armenian Genocide so that we can help others in the world who are at risk.”

“We have to show that the denialists and people who are complicit in human rights abuse – and many of those people are in the same camp – are using the same tactics today to commit human rights abuses that they did to the Armenian people in 1915 and beyond. So it’s really important to draw attention to why people are denying, what are the tactics they’re using, demonstrate that what happened to the Armenian people unfortunately is not a unique situation – we’re connected to all these other groups that have suffered atrocities as well – and that we need to basically come together to once and for all say never forget and then do everything we can for the ‘never again’ component of it.”

Bringing The Promise to the big screen was no easy task. Christian Bale was drawn to the project for that very reason. “I learned about the efforts to get a major film made, and how over the decades it’s really been thwarted. Kirk Kerkorian himself, owning, running MGM was not able to do it at that time.” He went on to admit that “embarrassingly, and I think quite commonly, I learned about the Armenian Genocide really around the same time that the hundredth anniversary was happening, and it was stunning to me that such an atrocity is largely unknown. It’s this great unknown genocide, but it’s modern history. And the consequences – or lack of consequences – for this probably provoked many of the other genocides we’ve seen since.”

He found himself drawing parallels to current events: “And I was reading the script, Musa Dagh, the seizure on the mountain, and I was watching the news, and there were the Yazidis under siege being slaughtered, and it just made me realize how relevant this story was.”

La times Review: ‘The Promise,’ an epic melodrama set during the Armenian genocide, falls frustratingly flat

April 21, 2017 By administrator

By Katie Walsh,

History is rife with horrific events that somehow manage to reveal true humanity and heroism. Many of these events are underreported, underrepresented and misunderstood, such as the Armenian genocide — the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians and other ethnic and religious minorities by the Ottoman Empire, starting in 1915.

Knowledge of this genocide isn’t universal, and Turkey, the successor nation of the Ottoman Empire, still refuses to acknowledge it. The epic melodrama “The Promise,” based on these events, seeks to remedy popular understanding of the horror. It’s a noble undertaking that only partially succeeds.

Written by Robin Swicord and director Terry George, “The Promise” has all the trappings of a romantic epic — movie stars, love triangles, exotic destinations. It boasts Oscar Isaac, Christian Bale and gorgeous European locations, plus experienced talent behind the camera, so it’s confounding then that “The Promise” falls so flat.

The film is a color-by-numbers wartime drama. Isaac plays Mikael, a young medical student from a small Armenian village, pursuing his fortune in Constantinople. There he befriends a young Turk (Marwan Kenzari) and an American reporter (Bale) and falls in love with a worldly and well-traveled Armenian woman, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), though he’s promised to a young woman back home. When the Ottomans enter World War I, the group is torn apart by hatred, racism and violence.

At least, that’s what we can glean from the events depicted onscreen. Throughout its two-hour plus running time, there is nary an explanation of the political machinations behind the persecution of the Armenians. There’s a bit of chit-chat and singing with some German soldiers, a mean Turkish father, and then suddenly everyone’s being executed and shipped off to labor camps while villages burn.

The lack of exposition could be intended to align us with Mikael’s naive perspective. But you’ll definitely leave “The Promise” with far more questions than you started. Perhaps we can never really answer why one group commits genocide against another, but it feels slightly irresponsible to make a film ostensibly shedding light on this atrocity and then not attempt to explain it in the least.

Instead, “The Promise” is mostly concerned with the love triangle between Ana, Mikael and Chris, the reporter. And even the love triangle itself is a disappointment, as these men never seem too concerned that the other is romancing his girl.

The usually charismatic Isaac is saddled with a dud of a character. Mikael spends most of the film buffeted by forces beyond his control and deferring to the desires of others, such as the army and his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo). It’s not until the third act that he starts to make his own decisions. The swaggering heroics are left to Bale as the Hemingway-esque American foreign correspondent.

With seemingly all the right pieces, it’s a disappointment that “The Promise” lacks the energy and originality needed to sustain itself. It might be fresh material, but the approach is decidedly stale.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

‘The Promise’

Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes

Rating: PG-13, for thematic material including war atrocities, violence and disturbing images, and for some sexuality

Playing: In general release

Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-promise-review-20170420-story.html

‘The Promise’ Filmmakers Hope Movie Will Spur International Community to Recognize the Armenian Genocide

April 21, 2017 By administrator

By Cortney O’Brien,

The Promise covers a largely underreported tragedy: The Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century. About 1.5 million Armenians were murdered between 1915 and 1918, during the Young Turks movement of the Ottoman Empire. Many people today do not know the extent of the massacre. Thanks to a dedicated crew and an A-list cast, the atrocity is now getting some attention in the Hollywood spotlight.

Director Terry George knows that genocide is not a popular topic in Hollywood, which thrives on sexy plots, but it is one that he is passionate about. His first blockbuster hit, Hotel Rwanda, centered on the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s. Like in that award-winning film, George manages to create a love story in the midst of the tragedy in The Promise. His fictional love triangle, comprised of Christian Bale (Batman Begins), Charlotte Le Bon, and Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), is conceived with the goal of attracting a broader audience.

Sharing George’s passion for the Armenian people is Executive Producer Ralph Winter. Winter, who lives in a large Armenian community, also happens to have a birthday that falls on the same day of the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, April 24. With these personal connections, he already knew a little of the Armenians’ tragic heritage before reading the script.

“We did struggle a little but settled on a love story as the best way to enter into the backdrop of World War I, as opposed to making it a war movie,” he explained to Townhall. “We wanted to tell it through the people that are inadvertently experiencing it.”

Winter admits the crew did worry how the love triangle plot would be received by the conservative Armenian community, who would frown on such promiscuity.

He and his fellow filmmakers sought to hit the “right tone that’s not offensive but illustrates that in those desperate times of war that there’s so many confusing emotions and feelings.” It’s a “tricky story to tell,” he added, “to resonate at every level.”

The Promise seemed to do just that at an early screening at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. Audible sobs – both from Armenian and non-Armenian audience goers – interrupted the film at several emotional moments – particularly during the scenes when families were ripped apart.

Winter hopes the film will prompt more recognition of the atrocity against the Armenian people and compel the international community to finally label it a genocide.

“It’s been sidelined as being a cultural thing,” Winter said. “Obama was willing at one point to say something but even he couldn’t follow through. It’s a painful story and I think this movie puts a face on this genocide and so there’s tangible things to look at.”

The word “genocide,” Winter said, is so important because it’s “a recognition of the purposeful killing that took place, not just inadvertent war casualties.”

It comes with a sense of responsibility, he added, so he can see why Turkey avoids the term. Yet, the U.S. also has its reasons for avoiding the term – it could affect our relationship with NATO partners.

“It’s tricky to get our country to recognize it because it’s freighted with choices we have to make with a partner like Turkey, who’s in NATO and is aligned with the war effort in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq,” Winter explained. “It implies responsibility, intent and purpose.”

The movie’s concluding sequence, in which Armenians flock to boats to escape the persecution, recalls the refugee plight of today, as Christian Bale remarked at a recent premiere, the film has an “unfortunate timeliness.”

“What’s shocking is that even as we are making the movie, the massacre scene in particular, we were recreating images we had seen the night before on The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,” Winter recalled. “It was painful for the crew. They had to take a moment because it was overwhelming. Here we are, 100 years after this happened, recreating the same images of the little Syrian boy laying at the edge of the water. We had no idea what would be happening. But it is indicative that this kind of story will keep happening unless we engage the world community to do something. “

The Promise is in theaters Friday, April 21.

Source: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2017/04/21/the-promise-review-n2315764

‘The Promise’ vs. ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant’: Two Movies Battle Over The Armenian Genocide

April 21, 2017 By administrator

by Alex Ritman , Mia Galuppo

The filmmakers behind the new historical epic, starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, charge that Turkish interests tried to counter their film by creating a competing movie.

The two films — released just over a month apart — look remarkably similar. Both promise sweeping love stories, both boast Hollywood talent, and both are set against the massacre of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I, a gruesome period of history that led to the creation of one of the dictionary’s most horrific terms, genocide, coined by Raphael Lemkin in the wake of World War II.

But the similarities between The Ottoman Lieutenant, which opened March 20, and The Promise, which arrives in theaters Friday, may be more than just coincidence. In fact, the filmmakers behind The Promise charge that The Ottoman Lieutenant may be part of Turkish efforts to deny that the Armenian Genocide took place.

The Promise, starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale and directed by Hotel Rwanda’s Terry George, is the more high-profile of the new features, having received a major marketing push in recent weeks. The project, which Open Road is distributing, was a long-time dream of the late billionaire and MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian, who put up the movie’s massive $100 million budget.

The Ottoman Lieutenant stars Josh Hartnett alongside rising actress Hera Hilmar and features a cameo from Ben Kingsley and was directed by Joseph Rubin, best known for such films as 1987’s The Stepfather and 1991’s Sleeping with the Enemy. Released on March 10 by New York-based Paladin, the film played 216 theaters where it collected less than $150,000 in its first weekend.

The trailers for both films appear to follow the same strategy: Both kick off in dreamy fashion in the sprawling continent-straddling and minaret skylined metropolis of Constantinople (now Istanbul), both offering plenty of iconic Turkish imagery, both taking a violent turn with the outbreak of war and both offering a sizeable degree of melodrama along the way.

But, as the reviews have made clear, there is one major difference between the two films.

Whereas The Promise lays the blame for the Armenian Genocide, the systematic extermination of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, squarely at the hands of the Ottoman government, a fact almost unanimously acknowledged by historians, The Ottoman Lieutenant offers a more revisionist viewpoint. While it admits that massacres took place, it blames the murderous events on rogue groups of war-ravaged soldiers, presenting them as the unfortunate consequences of the hostilities and not something ordered from up top (in fact, its dashing Turkish soldier hero ultimately puts his life on the line to save a group of Armenian villagers).

That revisionist argument is also the position of the Turkish government, which has, for the past 100 years, vehemently denied that any such genocide took place. And so the creators of The Promise believe that The Ottoman Lieutenant was produced not only in an attempt to blunt some of the impact of The Promise, but they also suspect and are alleging that there may be links between the film and the hardline government of president Recap Erdogan, who won a controversial referendum, granting him more powers, earlier this week. The key figures in the making of The Ottoman Lieutenant did not respond to THR’s requests for comment.

George, speaking with THR, cited the “remarkable’ similarity in the style of the two films, right down to their publicity materials. The Promise producer Eric Esralien echoed that observation, noting The Ottoman Lieutenant’s title treatment “looked exactly the same as ours.” He called the rival film “another alternative fact-type smokescreen” that tries to “confuse people.” Added George, “It’s not hard to see the motivation. Clearly, they had to have gotten wind of us making this film.”

Mike Medavoy, another of The Promise, takes it a step further, alleging that Bilal Erdogan, the 35-year-old son of the Turkish president, had a hand in financing The Ottoman Lieutenant. The movie “was apparently financed by Erdogan’s son,” Medavoy said to THR at the film’s New York premiere earlier this week. “What’s interesting to me is that they felt they needed to make this counter-political argument.”

To explain The Ottoman Lieutenant’s possible connection to the Turkish government, Carla Garapedian, an associate producer on The Promise who works for the non-profit Armenian Film Foundation, first points to a discovery by an organization called Project Save, a Massachusetts-based archive of old Armenian photos. Contacted by The Ottoman Lieutenant’s producers asking to license some images, the curator made some inquiries. “He found that the production was Turkish-financed” says Garapedian. THR has learned that Project Save ultimately declined to license any photos to The Ottoman Lieutenant.

Bilal Erdogan is believed to have business ties outside the film industry with Yusuf Esenkel, the founder of Eastern Sunrise Film and also a producer of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Esenkel also is a producer of Filinta, a Turkish soap opera (described by one source as “like a crude Ottoman Downton Abbey”) that aired between 2014 and 2016 and believed to be one of the most expensive series on local TV. President Erdogan and his wife are known to have visited the Filinta set, congratulating the entire production team.

Esenkel’s work often seems to downplay some of the most notorious periods of bloodshed in Turkish history. The producer’s small-screen follow-up to Filinta, also produced by Eastern Sunrise Film (or ES Film as it is sometimes called) is another extravagant period series, Payitaht Abulamid, a biopic of Abdulhamid II, the last sultan of Turkey, which began airing in February. Historians outside of Turkey sometimes refer to Abdulhamid as the “Red Sultan,” a nickname he earned due to the well-documented massacres of hundreds of thousands of Armenians that took place during his rule in the late 19th century, a precursor to the eventual genocide that started in 1915. But in the TV show Abdulhamid is depicted as a noble leader forced to do what he must to protect the Ottoman Empire.

It’s not clear what role Esenkal may have played in shaping The Ottoman Lieutenant. He didn’t respond to THR’s queries, nor did others in the creative team, including the U.S.-based producer Stephen Brown (U.S. Marshals, The Devil’s Advocate). Reps for director Rubin explained that he had a “non-disparagement clause” in his contract and wasn’t doing any press for the film.

The only person who did respond to THR was Ron Bareham, the film’s line producer, who said he wasn’t convinced The Ottoman Lieutenant was produced because of The Promise. “There was talk about [The Promise] when we were filming, but this film was started years before,” he says. “ As far as I know, the gestation period was six to eight years.” U.K.-based Bareham, who was brought on at the last moment to replace a previous line producer who left the weekend before production was to have started, admitted that he was mostly unaware of the history – or financing – behind The Ottoman Lieutenant.

George does acknowledge that “[The Ottoman Lieutenant] started shooting, from what I’ve read, before us.”

But there was definitely jockeying for release dates between the two films.

Initially, when it looked as if The Promise would be getting a December 2016 release, it was announced that The Ottoman Lieutenant would be given an Oscar-qualifying run that same month. When it was then officially announced that The Promise would be released April 21, The Ottoman Lieutenant’s U.S. launch was pushed to March 10. The jostling has led to claims from several online commentators that producers have simply been trying to “confuse” U.S. cinemagoers. The Ottoman Lieutenant’s domestic distributor, Paladin Pictures, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

If The Ottoman Lieutenant was, in fact, a Turkish government-funded piece of cinematic propaganda designed to counter The Promise, it didn’t have much impact at the box-office, where it grossed less than $250,000 in its U.S. run.

The Promise is opening in more than 2,000 locations in an attempt reach more hearts and minds, but it, too, appears to be heading into a box-office wall, with tracking predicting an opening weekend of around $4 million. (The producers of The Promise say that profits from the film will go to charity).

But while the existing of two dueling movies might suggest a debate still exists over whether the Armenian Genocide took place, Bale, attending The Promise’s New York premiere, put it simply. “There’s no debate. I really hope this helps, not to fuel more hostilities and accusations, but it does seem to me with the research and knowledge. there really is no question about this happening and it being a genocide.”

–Ashley Lee contributed to this report

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/promise-ottoman-lieutenant-two-movies-battle-armenian-genocide-996196

“The Promise” Sets Hollywood Technique Against the Armenian Genocide’s Horrors

April 19, 2017 By administrator

By Alan Scherstuhl,

Terry George’s The Promise has the rare good fortune of turning up in theaters just weeks after another film showed how necessary a movie like this is. The second star-driven war-adventure film of 2017 to set a cross-cultural love triangle against the horror of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise would outclass its forerunner, The Ottoman Lieutenant, even if it weren’t manifestly better in its story and acting and more arresting in its sweep.

The Ottoman Lieutenant, more a romance than a reckoning with history, never quite brings itself to admit that the Armenian Genocide actually happened — instead, it presents the Ottoman Empire in the era of the First World War as a land torn generically by war, one whose people at least had the good fortune to be tended to by Hera Hilmar’s plucky American nurse, who will treat anyone, regardless of which god they serve. Much of that film concerns her dueling suitors, and the final shot is a howler: In the highlands near Mt. Ararat, a parade line of wounded and dying Turks and Armenians lie on their gurneys as the camera cranes out and Hilmar dashes purposefully from one to the next. Civilization has crumbled, faiths are clashing and the Turks have set in motion the extermination of some 1.5 million Armenians, but the movie urges us not to worry — she’s got this.

Nobody’s got the situation under control in The Promise, a handsome but lumpish film whose creators are too honest to lie to us about individual heroism. George and Robin Swicord have also built their screenplay around three conflicted lovers, but here the history overwhelms the romance. Nobody in The Promise has to point out that their love problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, because that crazy world is forever trying to kill them and everyone they care about. Rather than sweat over who’s crushing on whom, the protagonists endeavor to survive, offer aid to refugees and let the world know the truth about a campaign of mass murder that, to this day, the Turkish government still won’t officially acknowledge.

Oscar Isaac stars as Michael, an Armenian man who in 1914 leaves his village in the mountains to study medicine in Constantinople. When the killing starts, and Turks are attacking Armenians in the streets (a scene reminiscent of George’s Hotel Rwanda), it takes him agonizing minutes to bring down an assailant. He’s assisted in this by Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), an Armenian ballerina, who chucks cabbages at the killers’ heads. The movie’s an epic, but the characters are human-scaled; their desperate actions are refreshingly un-aestheticized.

Called to arms in the late reels, Michael can’t bring himself to shoot the Turks advancing on an encampment of Armenian refugees. Instead, he dedicates himself to treating the wounded. Principled pacifism here is as noble and moving as it is in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, but George handles it in just heartbeats — and without the sense that he’s aroused by the violence the pacifist rejects.

Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/the-promise-sets-hollywood-technique-against-the-terror-of-the-armenian-genocide-9887292

Path to screen for Armenian epic includes evading a knockoff

April 18, 2017 By administrator

By JAKE COYLE, AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — “The Promise,” the grandest big-screen portrayal ever made about the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, has been rated by more than 111,300 people on IMDb – a remarkable total considering it doesn’t open in theaters until Friday and has thus far been screened only a handful of times publicly.

The passionate reaction is because “The Promise,” a $100-million movie starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, has provoked those who deny that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1923 by the Ottoman Empire or that the deaths of Armenians were the result of a policy of genocide. Thousands, many of them in Turkey, have flocked to IMDb to rate the film poorly, sight unseen. Though many countries and most historians call the mass killings genocide, Turkey has aggressively refused that label.

Yet that wasn’t the most audacious sabotage of “The Promise,” a passion project of the late billionaire investor and former MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian.

In March, just a few weeks before “The Promise” was to open, a curiously similar-looking film called “The Ottoman Lieutenant” appeared. Another sweeping romance set during the same era and with a few stars of its own, including Ben Kingsley and Josh Hartnett, “The Ottoman Lieutenant” seemed designed to be confused with “The Promise.” But it was made by Turkish producers and instead broadcast Turkey’s version of the events – that the Armenians were merely collateral damage in World War I. It was the Turkish knockoff version of “The Promise,” minus the genocide.

“It was like a reverse mirror image of us,” said Terry George, director and co-writer of “The Promise.” George, the Irish filmmaker, has some experience in navigating the sensitivities around genocide having previously written and directed 2004’s “Hotel Rwanda,” about the early ’90s Rwandan genocide.

George bought a ticket to see it. “Basically the argument is the Turkish government’s argument, that there was an uprising and it was bad and we had to move these people out of the war zone – which, if applied to the Nazis in Poland would be: ‘Oh, there was an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and we need to move these Jews out of the war zone,'” says George. “The film is remarkably similar in terms of structure and look, even.”

The nascent production company behind “The Ottoman Lieutenant,” Eastern Sunrise Productions, did not respond to queries for this article. Critics lambasted the film as “revisionist history” that “glosses over genocide.” Salon wondered , “What is Sir Ben Kingsley doing in ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant?'”

The killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I is widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of war and civil unrest.

While the creation of a rival historical drama is fairly unprecedented, Armenians have a long history of roadblocks in Hollywood. The first film to chronicle the genocide was a 1919 silent called “Ravished Armenia.” In the mid ’30s, MGM began pre-production on an adaptation of Franz Werfel’s “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” with Clark Gable to star. But under pressure from the Turkish government, it was scuttled.

Elia Kazan’s “America America” (1963), an immigrant’s odyssey modeled after Kazan’s family’s own experience, began with persecution of Armenians and Greeks. But the films to most capture Armenian persecution have been made outside Hollywood, by international filmmakers like Atom Egoyan (2002’s “Ararat”) and Fatih Akin (2014’s “The Cut”).

“The Promise,” bankrolled by the Kerkorian Foundation, was also made totally outside the studio system. Its makers are donating all proceeds to nonprofit organizations, and intend to use the PG-13-rated film as an education tool in schools. Its release has been timed to the April 24 anniversary of the genocide.

“One of the big things for us was taking the darkness of the Armenian genocide and moving it into the light,” said producer Eric Esrailian, a Los Angeles physician and friend to Kerkorian. “Genocide denial is one phase of genocide. The way systematic denial has tried to crush it and bury the truth for so many years, it’s amazing to see it all come to light now.”

“The Promise” was modeled after epics like “Doctor Zhivago” and “Casablanca,” charting a love story across wartime. Most of the horrors occur off-screen. Kerkorian, who died in 2015, dreamed of a classical treatment that would render the Armenia plight with the grandeur it has long been denied.

“It’s still a movie,” said Esrailian. “It’s not a political statement. It’s just the truth.”

Bale, who plays an Associated Press correspondent in the film, was drawn to the altruistic nature of the project. “To my shame, I knew nothing about the Armenian genocide,” said Bale. “When I first read the script, it was an uncanny moment.”

He suspects many are like he was: only vaguely aware of the events, even though they were extensively covered by the press at the time. Hitler even cited the lack of remembrance of the Armenians as justification for the Holocaust. Still, the U.S. government in recent decades has declined to classify it genocide, despite the promises of some presidents, including Barack Obama , to do so. Turkey is a valuable NATO ally to the U.S. in, among other things, the fight against the Islamic State.

“I really only hope that the film can help and not actually exacerbate any problems,” said Bale. “But to me, it doesn’t take a genius to see that there’s an embarrassment to having to acknowledge the atrocities that occurred in the birthing of a nation. It happens to many nations.”

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Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP