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The Cut review: Fatih Akin's Armenian genocide epic draws blood
Tahar Rahim is a mute father searching for his children in the
aftermath of a conflict cinema has tended to neglect. His story is
compassionately handled, but the film lacks the subtlety of Akin's
earlier, non-English language work
Peter Bradshaw in Venice
theguardian.com, Sunday 31 August 2014 12.10 BST
Echoes of Pasolini's Christ in the Gospel According To St Matthew ...
Rahim with daughters in The Cut.Photograph: Indiewire
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
asked Adolf Hitler, and this mass murder in 1915 by the Ottomans of
the minority Armenian population is still a hugely controversial
subject, especially in Turkey where there is resistance to assuming a
retrospective burden of genocidal shame. Fatih Akin, the
German-Turkish film-maker, has made it the starting-point for a
heartfelt, if soapy Zhivago-ish quest epic, his first English-language
movie; he directs, produces and co-writes with Mardik Martin, the
veteran screenwriter who worked with Scorsese on Raging Bull and Mean
Streets.
It's a big, ambitious, continent-spanning piece of work, concerned to
show the Armenian horror was absorbed into the bloodstream of
immigrant-descended population in the United States, but it is a
little simplistic emotionally, especially in its latter half as the
film trudges across America with its hero. It doesn't have the
sophisticated nuance and wit of Akin's contemporary German-language
movies, like Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007).
A still from The Cut Photograph: Indiewire
This horrifying historical episode is neglected in the cinema --
although Atom Egoyan addressed it in his 2002 film Ararat; Akin takes
it on in good faith, although Armenian communities may take exception
to the fact that he actually dramatises, on screen, the brutal deaths
of 30 or so victims. The part can stand for the whole of course, but
the total numbers involved are not specified.
Tahar Rahim plays the embattled hero Nazareth, a blacksmith and
Armenian Christian who is torn from his wife and twin daughters by the
Ottoman authorities for a supposed military conscription which is
nothing more than slave labour on a work gang and a forced march
heading to racial annihilation. But he encounters decent Turks: a
civilian prisoner who pretends to cut his throat at the orders of a
soldier, but merely stabs him in the neck, leaving Nazareth alive but
mute. Nazareth scrambles away, an undead fugitive from history: a crew
of Turkish army deserters help him with food and water.
He is finally taken in by a soap manufacturer: the ambiguous metaphor
is there if we want it -- the soap which genuinely cleanses, or merely
something with which powerful people will wash their hands of
responsibility. The manufacturer attempts to give some of his wares to
soldiers, and calls after them: "The whores of Aleppo will thank you!"
Poor, mute Nazareth becomes obsessed with one thing: finding his
daughters, now young women, a mission which will take him on a journey
of thousands of miles.
A still from The Cut Photograph: PR
It is this journey which is frankly the film's weaker aspect. There is
little historical or political contention in it, and not much actual
drama; the horror itself recedes in the memory to be replaced by a
long search and a long haul, with disappointments verging on the
farcical, in the course of which Rahim's character does not grow or
change that much. He remains pretty boyish-looking, despite some grey
hairs at the end. (At the beginning of the movie, in fact, he has a
look of Pasolini's Christ in the Gospel According To St Matthew.) And
he is mute, of course, which means that there is not much in the
script for Tahar Rahim to work with, and he gives what amounts to a
very subdued performance although interestingly one moment when he
does comes alive is in his entranced reaction to a silent movie show:
Chaplin in The Kid. Nazareth's eyes light up like a child's.
But otherwise the movie is not much leavened with comedy or happiness.
It's understandable. The Cut can mean the brutal act of murder itself;
it can mean the division of husbands from wives, parents from
children, and it can mean the present from the past, the insidious
amputation of memory. Whether The Cut encompasses this last sense is
up for debate, but it is a forceful, watchable, strongly presented
picture and a courageous, honest gesture from Fatih Akin.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/31/the-cut-review-fatih-akins-armenian-genocide-epic-draws-blood
Tahar Rahim is a mute father searching for his children in the
aftermath of a conflict cinema has tended to neglect. His story is
compassionately handled, but the film lacks the subtlety of Akin's
earlier, non-English language work
Peter Bradshaw in Venice
theguardian.com, Sunday 31 August 2014 12.10 BST
Echoes of Pasolini's Christ in the Gospel According To St Matthew ...
Rahim with daughters in The Cut.Photograph: Indiewire
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
asked Adolf Hitler, and this mass murder in 1915 by the Ottomans of
the minority Armenian population is still a hugely controversial
subject, especially in Turkey where there is resistance to assuming a
retrospective burden of genocidal shame. Fatih Akin, the
German-Turkish film-maker, has made it the starting-point for a
heartfelt, if soapy Zhivago-ish quest epic, his first English-language
movie; he directs, produces and co-writes with Mardik Martin, the
veteran screenwriter who worked with Scorsese on Raging Bull and Mean
Streets.
It's a big, ambitious, continent-spanning piece of work, concerned to
show the Armenian horror was absorbed into the bloodstream of
immigrant-descended population in the United States, but it is a
little simplistic emotionally, especially in its latter half as the
film trudges across America with its hero. It doesn't have the
sophisticated nuance and wit of Akin's contemporary German-language
movies, like Head-On (2004) and The Edge of Heaven (2007).
A still from The Cut Photograph: Indiewire
This horrifying historical episode is neglected in the cinema --
although Atom Egoyan addressed it in his 2002 film Ararat; Akin takes
it on in good faith, although Armenian communities may take exception
to the fact that he actually dramatises, on screen, the brutal deaths
of 30 or so victims. The part can stand for the whole of course, but
the total numbers involved are not specified.
Tahar Rahim plays the embattled hero Nazareth, a blacksmith and
Armenian Christian who is torn from his wife and twin daughters by the
Ottoman authorities for a supposed military conscription which is
nothing more than slave labour on a work gang and a forced march
heading to racial annihilation. But he encounters decent Turks: a
civilian prisoner who pretends to cut his throat at the orders of a
soldier, but merely stabs him in the neck, leaving Nazareth alive but
mute. Nazareth scrambles away, an undead fugitive from history: a crew
of Turkish army deserters help him with food and water.
He is finally taken in by a soap manufacturer: the ambiguous metaphor
is there if we want it -- the soap which genuinely cleanses, or merely
something with which powerful people will wash their hands of
responsibility. The manufacturer attempts to give some of his wares to
soldiers, and calls after them: "The whores of Aleppo will thank you!"
Poor, mute Nazareth becomes obsessed with one thing: finding his
daughters, now young women, a mission which will take him on a journey
of thousands of miles.
A still from The Cut Photograph: PR
It is this journey which is frankly the film's weaker aspect. There is
little historical or political contention in it, and not much actual
drama; the horror itself recedes in the memory to be replaced by a
long search and a long haul, with disappointments verging on the
farcical, in the course of which Rahim's character does not grow or
change that much. He remains pretty boyish-looking, despite some grey
hairs at the end. (At the beginning of the movie, in fact, he has a
look of Pasolini's Christ in the Gospel According To St Matthew.) And
he is mute, of course, which means that there is not much in the
script for Tahar Rahim to work with, and he gives what amounts to a
very subdued performance although interestingly one moment when he
does comes alive is in his entranced reaction to a silent movie show:
Chaplin in The Kid. Nazareth's eyes light up like a child's.
But otherwise the movie is not much leavened with comedy or happiness.
It's understandable. The Cut can mean the brutal act of murder itself;
it can mean the division of husbands from wives, parents from
children, and it can mean the present from the past, the insidious
amputation of memory. Whether The Cut encompasses this last sense is
up for debate, but it is a forceful, watchable, strongly presented
picture and a courageous, honest gesture from Fatih Akin.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/31/the-cut-review-fatih-akins-armenian-genocide-epic-draws-blood