Mardin, 1915: a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and becomes fixated on the idea of finding them and sets off to track them down.
Akin has mischievously called the movie a western, and his wide-screen photography gives a sweeping sense of the vast distances separating the hero from his girls.
Those with a greater patience for streamlined, propulsive storytelling will be rewarded with a riveting saga of parental determination and historical horror.
[Akin] is s a resourceful collector of the sounds and sensations of the contemporary world... but there are only a few vividly imagined moments in [this] muted, somber passage...
This depiction could be seen as an allegory of the millions who have been displaced by the Syrian war and continue to fight for their survival as refugees.
Bombardment of images resonates from Holocaust films. . .Powerful travelogue visuals almost overwhelm the enormity of Armenian genocide and the cross-continental diaspora.
The Cut is a haunting movie, but there are times when one wonders whether Akin should go more for the emotional jugular, rub our faces in the monstrosity he's depicting.
He's a man traversing the frontier and isolated pockets of humanity (not always welcoming) to find the promised land of family, and Akin and cinematographer Rainer Klausmann find astounding backdrops for his odyssey...
Akin uses a visually compelling yet sober, almost restrained, aesthetic that differs from the more full-throttle approach of some of his previous work.
