The third part of Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin’s trilogy ‘Love, Death and the Devil’ is a slow-winding powerful globe-trotting epic that follows Nazaret Manoogian (French actor Tahar Rahim) an Armenian blacksmith on his journey to reunite with his family after war has torn them apart. It starts in 1915 when the Turkish Army carry out a mass genocide of the Armenians and Manoogian has been drafted into war work and forced into building roads with a gang who are all end up being executed by a band of marauding bandits. He escapes because the ex-criminal assigned to kill him hasn’t the heart to do the job so he just slits part of his throat which leaves him speechless, but alive.
After surviving death Manoogian is eventually rescued by a sympathetic traveling soap manufacturer who sneaks him into the nearby town of Aleppo and gives him sanctuary from the mercenary Turkish Army. Then in 1918 when the British finally liberate the city and drive the Turks out, he discovers quite by chance that although his wife died in the war, his twin daughters survived and are still alive. Thus starts his odyssey that will take him several years and right across to the other side of the world, a journey that is not helped by the fact that he is both destitute and mute.
When Manoogian eventually tracks down the orphanage where some Beduins had dropped the girls off, he discovers that one of the tutors had arranged marriages for both of them with Armenian businessmen. They however had already left to go to Cuba, and so Manoogian gets a passage as crew on a steamboat to follow them to the Tropics. By now we are getting the message that despite all his arduous efforts to go to such extremes, he is always one step behind them as they are never there when he arrives at his next destination.
It’s a heart wrenching saga that seems like Manoogian’s troubles will never cease and it all appears so completely futile, partly because of his inability to speak so we can totally understand how he really is coping with this. He always looks so forlorn against the vast stunning but treacherous barren vistas that he must deal with from the Armenian deserts to the American Plains that add another compelling layer to this melodrama.
Although ‘The Cut’ lacks some of the punch of the much acclaimed and multi-award winning ‘Head-On’ and ‘The Edge of Heaven’, it is still a rather spectacular movie that shows that Akin is most definitely still at the top of his game. He’s helped with a wonderful central performance from Rahim who expresses himself so beautifully with his face and gestures for us to share the depths of his struggle in his singular mission that never seems like it will ever end happily.
