The Promise Dvd

The Promise is a 2016 American historical drama film directed by Terry George and starring Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale, set in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. The plot is about a love triangle that develops between Mikael (Isaac), an Armenian medical student, Chris (Bale), a Paris-based American journalist, and Ana (Le Bon), an Armenian-born woman raised in France, immediately before 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 was a box office bomb, grossing just $12 million against its $90 million budget and losing the studio over $100 million, although the studio noted the main purpose of the film was to bring attention to the story, not make money.

George stated that using the medium of film is crucial as previous films educated audiences about real life events and that “Audiences learn more from films today than they do from history books.”

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 himself to Maral, the daughter of an affluent neighbor, receiving 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople (today known as Istanbul) and attend the Imperial School of Medicine.

There, he befriends Emre, the son of a high-level Turkish official. Through his wealthy uncle, Mikael 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 in the Ottoman army through a medical student exemption with the help of Emre. When Mikael tries to save his uncle from imprisonment during the roundups of April 24, 1915, he is detained and sent to a prison labor camp himself.

Mikael eventually escapes the camp. Returning to his village, he finds that 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 and 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 a site of a massacre, as it becomes clear all of Siroun’s inhabitants, including Mikael’s family, save his mother, have been killed by Turkish soldiers in the Ottoman Army. Mikael’s wife is found with their unborn child cut out from her body. Chris is captured by Ottoman troops 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 allowed to depart for 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 a 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 launches 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. 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 the generations to come.

Cast

Oscar Isaac as Mikael Boghosian, a medical student
Charlotte Le Bon as Ana Khesarian, an Armenian raised in Paris and lover of both Chris and Mikael
Christian Bale as Christopher “Chris” Myers, an American journalist with the Associated Press
Daniel Giménez-Cacho as Father Andreasian
Shohreh Aghdashloo as Marta
Rade Šerbedžija as Stephan, the Mayor of a small Armenian town that leads a group of refugees to fight the Ottoman army
Abel Folk as Harut
Andrew Tarbet as Pastor Merril
Angela Sarafyan as Maral
Armin Amiri as Captain Ali
Marwan Kenzari as Emre Ogan, the son of an Ottoman official who dies by firing squad because of his beneficial actions towards the Armenians and their allies
Igal Naor as Mesrob
Garen Boyajian as Eric Boghosian
Kevork Malikyan as Vartan Boghosian
Numan Acar as Mustafa
Roman Mitichyan as Serg
Jean Reno as the French admiral Louis Dartige du Fournet
Tom Hollander as Garin
Jean Claude Ricquebourg as a French Captain
James Cromwell as Henry Morgenthau Sr.
Alicia Borrachero as Lena
Milene Mayer Gutierrez as Yeva
Michael Stahl-David as Brad
Ozman Sirgood as Deputy Governor Mazhar
Markus Oberhauser as German Aid officer
Scott Greenlees as European student 4
Aaron Neil as Talaat Pasha
Shnorhk Sargsyan as Komitas
Marco Khan as Mehmet