The Promise (2016)

Share this quote on facebook My darling Yeva told me that her greatest wish was that her parents and our dear Ana were here. I told her I know that they *are*. For sure, they are here. And all of your parents and all those families lost in an attempt to wipe our nation from the face of the earth. But we're still here. We're still here.

Share this quote on facebook Empires fall. Love survives.

Share this quote on facebook Q: One of the most chilling lines in the movie is when Oscar’s character says, “It must be so nice to go home and write about this.” Americans are fairly removed from many of the tragedies in our world today, how can we change that?

Share this quote on facebook Christian Bale: Well, that line is countered by my character’s line because it’s absolutely valid and truthful, but equally truthful is when Chris Myers says, “Yes, but without the press, nobody would know what’s happening.” So, to your question, it shows how important it is to have a free press so we truly know what’s happening, especially now when we’re trying to filter through what’s real and what’s not.

Share this quote on facebook Q: Why did you decide it was important to make this movie, and what approach did you take to your role?

Share this quote on facebook Oscar Isaac: For me, to my shame, I didn’t know about the Armenian genocide before I got this script.To read about that, to read that 1.5 million Armenians perished at the hands of their own government, was horrifying. To this day it’s so little known, and there’s even active denial to it, so that was a big part of it. Also the cast that they put together, and then to learn that 100% of the proceeds would go to charity, it was an extraordinary thing to be part of. My approach was to read as much as I could, to immerse myself in the history of the time. There’s a small museum a few of us got to go to, and then for me, the biggest help was there were these videos and recordings from survivors who would recount the things they witnessed as children. To hear them recounted was heartbreaking, so I did feel some responsibility to tell their story.
Christian Bale: For me, continuing off from what Oscar was saying, to try and get into that mindset, and to try even in a very small way to understand the pain they must have gone through, in that people were telling them they were lying. They had witnessed it with their own eyes and experienced all that emotion, but people refused to call it what it was: genocide. There are still people today who refuse to call it that. It’s this great unknown genocide, and the lack of consequence may have provoked other genocides that have happened since.

Share this quote on facebook It’s easy to blow raspberries at the epic The Promise, in which Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale compete for the same woman against a backdrop of the Armenian genocide. But only a handful of narrative films have even touched on the Turkish-led massacre of a million and a half Armenians in the early 20th century (which Turkey still officially denies), so The Promise deserves at least a fair synopsis.

Share this quote on facebook Q': Did the Turkish government give you any problems?

Share this quote on facebook Terry George: I had a very healthy exchange with a Turkish journalist in LA. The Turkish perspective is that the genocide didn’t happen, it was a war, bad things happened, and lots of people died on both sides. I pointed out to him that was exactly true, but in the case of the Armenians it was their own government who was killing them. So we talked that out. We also had this thing where IMDB was hijacked, the sudden appearance of The Ottoman Lieutenant movie four weeks ago, which was like the reverse image of this film right down to the story. There’s a particular nervousness in Europe I think, both about the film and the political situation.

Share this quote on facebook With “The Promise,” George, co-writing with Robin Swicord, treats the Armenian genocide of the early part of the 20th century, an action undertaken by the soon-to-be-displaced Ottoman Empire, as a side exercise in its alliance with Germany as World War I was about to break out. Well over a million souls were killed in this action, which the contemporary Turkish government still declines to acknowledge. Indeed, the recent movie “The Ottoman Lieutenant,” set in the same period as this one, is produced in part by Turkish interests and has several scenes in which there’s a pronounced “whatever Armenians WERE killed kind of had it coming” vibe. And this film has been preemptively down-voted on IMDb by Armenian genocide deniers. One nice thing about George is that when he takes on a subject, he doesn’t flinch or back down about the truths he needs to convey. But it’s hard to deny that in some respects, “The Promise” takes a long way to getting around to the meat of the story.

Share this quote on facebook Q: What was it about The Promise that said “I have to do this”?

Share this quote on facebook BALE: I’m always on the verge of quitting. I hate what I do, but I love it as well. And occasionally, there’ll be something which I surprise myself with my choice. It keeps you going. It can result in big mistakes but sometimes can result in, you know, sort of happy accidents. This project came primarily because of my lack of education is why I did this project. I had no idea about the Armenian genocide, I’d never heard of it in my life.

Share this quote on facebook Q: I was going to say that the type of film that this is, is incredibly hard to make nowadays. I’m very impressed you guys were able to pull this off.

Share this quote on facebook BALE: Well, it only happened because it was a single financier, Kirk Kerkorian, and that’s it. People have been trying to make not this kind of movie, but specifically a movie about the Armenian genocide, and there have been some made, but not on this skill. And people have been trying to make this film for some time, I mean, Kirk Kerkorian himself, three times when he was running MGM was unable to make this film despite his best efforts, because each time it was thwarted because of interests whose interests were not in having the film made. So, many years in the making, and that was of course intriguing to me as well.

Share this quote on facebook Q: When you think back on the making of The Promise, is there a day or two that you’ll always remember? Like memorable moments from filming?