The Promise

The Promise is a 2016 American epic historical war drama film directed by Terry George, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Robin Swicord. Set in the final years of the Ottoman Empire, the film stars Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon and Christian Bale. The plot is about a love triangle that develops between Mikael (Isaac), an Armenian medical student, Chris (Bale), an American journalist, and Ana (Le Bon), an Armenian-born woman raised in France, immediately before and during 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 received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing just $12 million against its $90 million budget and losing Open Road over $100 million. However the studio noted the main purpose of the film was to bring attention to the story, not make money, with George saying that "audiences learn more from films today than they do from history books." The film also features "The Promise", which was the final single released by Chris Cornell, who died less than a month after the film's U.S. release. 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 to marry Maral, the daughter of an affluent neighbor, receiving 400 gold coins as a dowry. This allows him to travel to Constantinople and attend the Imperial School of Medicine. There, he befriends Emre, the son of a high-ranking Ottoman 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 into the Ottoman Army through a medical student exemption with the help of Emre. When Mikael, with Emre's help, tries to save his uncle from imprisonment during the roundups of April 24, 1915, he is detained and sent to a labor camp, while Emre is conscripted as a consequence for helping Mikael a second time after his father warned him not to do that.