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Shohreh Aghdashloo

The Promise – Love in a Time of Genocide

April 17, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“Our revenge will be to survive.”

The modern concept of genocide did not begin with the Holocaust; it started with the attempted extermination of the Armenians during the early years of World War I. The Promise tells the horrifying tale through the story of a love triangle (or perhaps quadrangle). It is a story of heroism, but also of flawed people who are face dire circumstances. They must not only seek to save themselves, but to try to save the identity of their community.

In 1914, at the dawn of World War I, Michael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac) leaves his village in Southern Turkey to study medicine in Constantinople. Turks and Armenians live and study side by side. Michael is staying with his well-to-do merchant uncle. There he meets the beautiful Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), who is from a village near his, but she has been traveling the world for many years. She is with an American journalist, Chris Myers (Christian Bale) who has come to cover the Ottoman Empire’s place within the war. Although Ana and Chris have a life together, there are certainly sparks between Ana and Michael. But Michael, too, has someone in his life. In his village awaits his fiancée Maral (Angela Sarafyan), whose dowry he is using to study medicine.

When the Ottoman Empire allies itself with Germany, they begin trying to destroy the Christian Armenian population. Many are jailed and slaughtered. Whole villages are destroyed. Michael is arrested and used for slave labor, but in time escapes, returns to his village and marries Maral before going into hiding. Meanwhile Chris and Ana are trying to help an American pastor smuggle orphans out of the country. Later Chris runs afoul of the authorities, is imprisoned, and expelled from the country. The dynamics of the Michael/Ana/Chris relationship shift throughout the story.

The love story serves to humanize this story of an atrocity. The promises that are made between them (some spoken, others not) sustain them in difficult times. But sometimes those promises are not kept. And sometimes those promises are ripped away by the circumstances.

Even though the story is set over a century ago, it is extremely timely. There continue to be those who flee persecutions and genocides. Director Terry George has previously dealt with genocide as the writer and director of Hotel Rwanda. Many of the scenes in the current film ominously reflect what we have seen on the news the last few years: swimmers in the Mediterranean seeking to escape to freedom, piles of dead bodies—even a dead baby beside the water.

This film serves to teach us history (because the Armenian Genocide really gets little attention outside the Armenian community. (The US and UK have never officially recognized the genocide because Turkey is such a strategic ally. Turkey refuses to acknowledge it at all.) But it also speaks to events happening in the world today. European and American politics struggle to respond to the refugee crises, especially dealing with people from the Middle East—the same region that this film is set in. This film reminds us that saving others is a courageous act. It may not always be safe, but it demands to be done.

Photos courtesy of Open Road

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: Angela Sarafyan, Armenian Genocide, Charlotte Le Bon, Christian Bale, genocide, Oscar Isaac, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Terry George, Turkey, World War I

Septembers of Shiraz – Revolutionary Backlash

June 24, 2016 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.” (Jalal ad-Din Rumi)

Revolutions can bring great advancement, but they often bring pain and chaos in their wake. Septembers of Shiraz is the story of an Iranian Jewish family that must cope with the uproar of the Iranian Revolution. The film opens with a wonderful celebration of family and friends shortly before the Revolution. Isaac (Adrien Brody), the patriarch, is a prosperous jeweler. They are preparing to send their son to America to boarding school. Soon, however, the situation deteriorates. One day Isaac is arrested and taken to prison where he is questioned, tortured, and held without trial. His family has no idea if he is alive or not. His wife Farnez (Salma Hayek) must protect herself and her daughter. In time the family must sacrifice all they have to escape from Iran. (So, of course, there is a tense mad dash to get to the border.)

While we often think of the cruelty of these events as tied in some way to Islam, what we see is not based in religion. Rather it is class warfare. That plays out a bit in the relationship between Farnez and her housekeeper (Shohreh Aghdashloo). Farnez has considered their relationship to be one of friendship, but we see that the role of servant is not the same as a friend. The persecution Isaac faces is not because he is a Jew, but because he has prospered in the system under the Shah that has been done away with.

I think it needs to be noted that this is not an Iranian film. This is a film made by American filmmakers about a country with which we have a history of trouble. That is not to say I think the film sets Iran in a bad light. What struck me in the film is not how barbarous the Iranian Revolution was, but how similar it was to so many other revolutions. The ones that especially came to mind were the Russian and French Revolutions. In both, after deposing the ruler, it soon devolved into a kind of mob rule which took on the trappings of equality. In France, everyone was “Citizen”; in Russia, “Comrade”. Here everyone is addressed as “Brother” whether they are oppressor or victim. The goal here (and I think this is true of the French and Russian Revolutions as well) isn’t some ideological standard, but vengeance for past inequality—punishing those who profited from past oppression, even if they were not an active participant.

Always these kinds of revolutions claim to be acting in the name of justice. Yet often the new order, as it tries to right past wrongs, ends up creating its own injustices. Perhaps that is why the filmmakers open the film with the quotation from Rumi above. It is calling up to look beyond those things we believe are right or wrong (or even of righting wrongs) and meet not in a battle, but as community.

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: Adrien Brody, Based on novel, based on true events, Iranian Revoulution, Revolution, Rumi, Salma Hayek, Shohreh Aghdashloo

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