Christian Bale Armenian Genocide film gets 55,126 1-star ratings on IMDb off just three public screenings
Either there are some absolutely enormous cinemas out there that I’ve somehow never heard about, or IMDb users are voting politically on The Promise without having seen it.
The Terry George-directed film stars Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac and is set during the final days of the Ottoman Empire, leading up to the Armenian Genocide that killed 1.5 million.
At the time of writing, it has 86,704 ratings on IMDb, 55,126 of which are one-star and 30,639 of which are 10-star, with very few ratings falling anywhere in between. The majority of votes come from males outside the US.
The Promise is believed to have only been screened to the public three times (we have contacted production company Survival Pictures for confirmation on this).
Armenian Diaspora communities have long been campaigning for recognition of the genocide by governments around the world. In 2010, a US congressional panel narrowly voted that the incident was indeed a genocide, a decision the Turkish government criticised, saying it had been accused of a crime it “had not committed”.
It is IMDb’s policy not to interfere with user ratings, but many have called for the database to step in following the tide of negative ratings.
We have reached out to IMDb for comment.
Official synopsis for The Promise:
‘It is 1914. As the Great War looms, the vast Ottoman Empire is crumbling. Constantinople (Istanbul), ITS once vibrant, multicultural capital is about to be consumed by chaos.
Michael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), arrives in the cosmopolitan hub as a medical student determined to bring modern medicine back to Siroun, his ancestral village in Southern Turkey where Turkish Muslims and Armenian Christians have lived side by side for centuries.
Photo-journalist Chris Myers (Christian Bale), has come here only partly to cover geo-politics. He is mesmerized by his love for Ana (Charlotte le Bon), an Armenian artist he has accompanied from Paris after the sudden death of her father.
When Michael meets Ana, their shared Armenian heritage sparks an attraction that explodes into a romantic rivalry between the two men even as Michael hangs on to a promise from his past. After the Turks join the war on the German side, the Empire turns violently against its own ethnic minorities. Despite their conflicts, everyone must find a way to survive — even as monumental events envelope their lives.’
