Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Review: Fatih Akin's well-intended 'The Cut' does a disservice to a

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Review: Fatih Akin's well-intended 'The Cut' does a disservice to a

    HitFix
    Aug 31 2014


    Review: Fatih Akin's well-intended 'The Cut' does a disservice to a
    historical tragedy


    Tahar Rahim is unfortunately restricted to a wordless performance throughout

    By Catherine Bray


    VENICE -- There's a piece of slang used on the website TV Tropes that
    regrettably applies to much of "The Cut." That word is "narm." Narm is
    defined as a moment that is supposed to be serious or tear-jerking,
    but due to poor execution becomes unintentionally funny. "The Cut" is
    unfortunately the narmiest drama I've seen at Venice.

    They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that's
    certainly true of Fatih Akin's incredibly earnest and well-meaning
    attempt to engage with the build-up, execution and fallout of the
    Armenian Genocide carried out by the Ottoman authorities in the 1910s.
    Obviously this is a huge and serious subject worthy of cinematic
    treatment at the highest level -- which is regrettably not what Akin
    delivers. Between 1 million and 1.5 million people are thought to have
    been killed on death marches through the Syrian desert, during which
    they were beaten, raped and murdered. Unfortunately, you don't really
    get any impression of the massive scale of all this from "The Cut" --
    its canvas is limited to the point that you could get the impression
    that the persecution and massacres affected maybe a couple of thousand
    people.

    There isn't a sense in the film of this tragedy as a systematic,
    organized atrocity affecting millions, which led to the coining of the
    term genocide and influenced the Nazis (a specific quote allegedly
    from Hitler -- "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of
    the Armenians?" -- is contentious, but there is far less doubt that he
    was influenced by these crimes). This matters; it does a disservice to
    those killed to minimize their story, however unintentionally, and I
    think it is unintentional -- a question of badly fluffed storytelling.

    The reason for the detrimental lack of scale is possibly partly due to
    budgetary issues, but mainly due to the creative decision to focus on
    one man's story. There are certainly ways to pick out a single person
    caught up in a large scale tragedy and use their story to personalize
    the wider event. But the focus here on Tahar Rahim's blacksmith
    Nazaret Manoogian is so narrow that almost everything else is
    excluded.

    When we meet Nazaret in 1915 in Mardin, he's a jolly fellow, proud of
    his beautiful wife and twin daughters. The twins hand him a scarf
    they've embroidered for him. You pretty much know instantly that the
    scarf is going to be a symbol to cling onto when all else is lost, and
    so it proves. Rumors are flying around the village that war is coming.
    "Horrible carnage, many people dying," reports the twin's
    schoolteacher ruefully. The actor's delivery of this line marked the
    first point at which I shifted in my seat, no longer sure I was in
    safe hands. And yes, the line is in English.

    For some bizarre reason, the film is mostly English language spoken in
    Armenian accents; a strange choice for a first English language
    feature from Akin. There are occasional detours into subtitled
    Turkish, which makes things even more confusing -- if you're going to
    have some people who wouldn't have spoken English speak in English,
    why not have the other people who wouldn't have spoken in English
    speak in English? My best guess is it's an attempt at Othering the
    Turkish for an English speaking audience -- we're on the side of the
    Armenians -- but it's very jarring. It also throws up confusing
    questions about Nazaret's understanding of actual English speakers
    when the story eventually takes him to America.


    http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/review-fatih-akins-well-intended-the-cut-does-a-disservice-to-a-historical-tragedy

Working...
X