Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Film: The Cut

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

  • Film: The Cut

    Screen Daily
    Sept 1 2014


    The Cut

    Dir: Fatih Akin. Germany-France-Italy-Russia-Poland-Canada-Turkey.
    2014. 138mins

    German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin takes on the Armenian genocide in
    a sprawling historical epic that is both politically committed
    atrocity drama and Western-tinged émigré odyssey. Owing a declared
    debt to Elia Kazan's Turkish emigration tale America, America, this
    lavish seven-territory co-production stars A Prophet's Tahir Rahim in
    his first unabashedly commercial role as a father looking for the twin
    daughters he was separated from during the persecutions of 1915.

    The Cut is a tribute to old-fashioned filmmaking values in its
    confident widescreen look and detailed, cast-of-hundreds historical
    reconstructions: every frame declares war on cinematic austerity. And
    yet despite the heady sweep through ten years and two continents, and
    the (surprisingly muted) emotional catharsis of the quest plotline,
    there's something about the film's generous old-school spend that
    leaves us feeling short-changed.

    Much of the problem is the main character, Nazaret, who is in every
    scene: he's a pleasant, unremarkable everyman, whose one quality is a
    stubborn survival instinct and the determination to get his family
    back. The director's (producer-prompted?) decision to have all the
    Armenians speak halting English to each other is another issue. In
    reaching for a wider market it could just have the opposite effect,
    certainly in Anglophone territories where the sort of crossover
    arthouse audiences this will be pitched at can be fussy about dialogue
    authenticity, and tend to have no fear of subtitles.

    Nazaret's stolid plod through adversity means that there's little
    ethical resonance other than righteous anger in a film in which the
    experiences of hundreds of thousands of Armenians who were killed or
    left to die during the forced deportations of World War I are just one
    of the obstacles on our hero's picturesque road to reconciliation.
    Even when Nazaret attacks and robs a man in Cuba, the only consequence
    is that he now has the money to pay for his passage to Florida.

    They did stories like that in the 1970s - and Akin's drafting in of
    veteran early-period Scorsese screenwriter Mardik Mardin to share the
    script credit is evidence that he likes it that way. But without The
    Piano Player's deft weaving of historical tragedy and personal moral
    drama, or the sheer character magnetism of other picaresque genre
    dramas like Barry Lyndon or Scarface, The Cut feels a little like a
    megalomaniac TV miniseries that's been trimmed back by an editorial
    committee from six hours to two and a half.

    Opening in a golden pre-atrocity glow of happy Armenian Christian
    families in the town of Mardin, where Nazaret (Rahim) works as a
    metalsmith, the film presents the genocide as a mix of deliberate
    ethnic cleansing, end-of-empire anarchy and bureaucratic negligence.
    Though much has been made of the ethnic-Turkish Akin's bravery at
    taking this taboo subject on, he himself has pointed out that the
    climate of opinion has changed in Turkey in recent years, especially
    since the publication of journalist Hasan Cemal's book 1915: The
    Armenian Genocide.

    Nazaret is separated from his wife Rakel and twin daughters early on;
    after a stint of forced labour in a road-building crew that is
    destined for slaughter when the Ottoman army pulls out, he makes a
    miraculous escape when his throat is stabbed rather than slit by a
    conscience-stricken conscript. From here it's a long switchback
    journey via armed bands of deserters and a horrific desert refugee
    camp to Aleppo, where he is taken in by a kindly soap merchant. Years
    pass before he discovers by chance that his daughters are still alive
    - cue for a second-act energy reboot that takes Nazaret from Syrian
    orphanages to Cuban barrios, Florida mangrove swamps and finally the
    wintry wastes of Minnesota in his search for closure.

    It's difficult to discern the Akin of Head On in much of a film that
    seems to prize production design, costumes and score (a lush emotional
    affair) over script and character development. Sure, it's beautiful to
    look at, with cinematographer Rainer Klaussman giving an artsy Western
    feel to Nazaret's journey through Syrian deserts and snowy Minnesota
    steppes. But there are times - such as the over-melodramatic, over-CGI
    scenes set in the Ras-al-Ayn death camps - when we feel we're in the
    Armenian genocide franchise of Les Miserables. And Rahim's honest
    performance as an innocent whose everyman survivor status is too
    obviously flagged by a Charlie Chaplin silent-film screening he
    attends in Aleppo is not enough to redeem this well-made, worthy,
    wandering epic.

    Production companies: Bombero International, Pyramide Productions, Pandora Film

    International sales: The Match Factory, [email protected]

    Producers: Fatih Akin, Karl Baumgartner, Reinhardt Brundig, Nurhan
    Sekerci-Porst, Flaminio Zadra

    Screenplay: Fatih Akin, Mardik Martin

    Cinematography: Rainer Klaussman

    Editor: Andrew Bird

    Production designer: Allan Starski

    Music: Alexander Hacke

    Main cast: Tahar Rahim, Hindi Zahra, Makram J. Khoury, Kevork
    Malikyan, Arsinee Khanijan, Bartu Kucukcaglayan, Simon Abkarian

    http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-latest/the-cut/5076883.article?blocktitle=REVIEWS&contentID=40296



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Working...
X