A doctor gets caught up in a love triangle during
World War I.
I'm fascinated by this movie. I bet most on you have
never heard of it. It premiered very quietly a couple years ago, despite
starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale and opening on over 2000 screens (which
is on par with a mid-level, nationwide release). It cost about $100 million to
make. It made a fraction of that money back, yet it isn't considered a failure
by the producer who funded it.
The Promise is a backdoor effort to get people to talk and learn
about the Armenian genocide. I'm not very familiar with this genocide. I've
come to realize that that's no accident. The Turkish government has ardently
denied the mass killing of a million Armenians during WWI for a century now,
and it has lobbied other countries to deny or remain quiet about it as well. I
haven't fully researched this, but in my experience, genocides are not
something people just fabricate. It's a hot button issue in Turkey and Armenia
still though. You don't have to take my word on it. Just look at the IMDB
reviews for The Promise. Before this film had been released publicly, it
already had tens of thousands of 1 star votes on IMDB and tens of thousands of
10 star votes. That's the kind of thing that you normally see happen with
political films. People will rate the film as a blind extension of a political
belief. Just check the rating breakdowns for Fahrenheit 11/9, An Inconvenient Sequel,
or Unplanned.
The Promise has the starkest contrast of any movie I've come across though*. A
small part of me is curious is posting about this movie at all will cause my
site traffic to fluctuate.
*For some context. Here are the ratings breakdowns
for a few other random movies: 10 Things I Hate About You. The Hurricane Heist. The Dark Knight. Sex and the City 2.
Here's the breakdown for The Promise...whoa.
The movie itself is...something of a different time.
OK, how can I explain this? If you walk up to a random person on the street and
ask them what an Oscar bait movie is, the movie they'll describe will probably
sound 20 or 30 years out of date. They'll probably describe something in the
classical sense like Out of Africa or Gandhi: gorgeously dressed period
pieces. Maybe they'll describe a WWII or WWII adjacent epic like Schindler's
List or Saving Private Ryan. In actuality, the most successful Oscar
bait in recent years has been smaller films, often about under seen groups (Moonlight,
Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave). They've also trended to
self-congratulatory movies about movies (The Artist, Birdman, La
La Land). Even when they are period dramas, like The Favourite, they
have an edge to them. Well, The Promise sounds like a producer threw
money at a director and asked him to make a prestige movie "the way I
remember them", when big movies were earnest and straightforward. That's
probably why this has so much Dr. Zhivago DNA in it.
Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale are both familiar and
fine in this. Isaac is stripped of much of his charm. He's much more sincere,
which he's also good at. I much prefer him when he's a little cocky or a little
unlikable though. That's more of Bale's role in the movie, which plays to his
strengths. If I can say, "that guy is a prick, but I kind of like
him", then a Christian Bale role is well-calibrated. I have less to say
about Charlotte Le Bon. She's fine, but this is another female role in an
historical epic that's entirely dependent on the men in the film. Her death
ends up being more of a plot device than anything about her character's
journey.
When all is said
and done, I have a little better understanding of the Armenian genocide, which
is the main goal of the movie. The large budget is used well. This looks like
it was expensive. The production design and costuming are nicely done. The
movie itself might be more comfortable coming out in 1995, but it's a decent
watch.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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