Ararat - Il monte dell'Arca

In 1915, right in the midst of World War I when the eyes of the world were focused on other corners of the planet, the Turks slaughtered over a million of their own Armenian citizens in a holocaust that the Turks to this day deny ever happened. Atom Egoyan's complex, though not entirely successful film, `Ararat,' attempts to show just how long a shadow this horrific genocide still casts over the Armenian people today.

Rather than simply make a film set at the time of the genocide, Egoyan has chosen to set his film in the present and have his vast assortment of characters reflect on what this almost century-old event means to them in their present lives (most of them are second generation Armenians and Turks living in Canada). One of those characters is an aged film director who, in honor of his mother who endured the atrocities, has come to Canada to make a film about the event. Thus, all the glimpses we get of the actual genocide are film-within-a-film reenactments. In a bit of irony, Egoyan shows just how difficult it is for any work of art to faithfully capture the `truth' of such an event, for falsehoods inevitably creep into the picture the moment the artist alters even minor facts under the guise of `artistic license.' This is particularly ironic given the fact that `truth' and `facts' are such an important part of the case the Armenians have built against the Turks. The film deals head-on with what is `truth' and how much of history comes down to a matter of personal perception.

Egoyan has provided a veritable labyrinth of characters and events, so much so that it becomes almost impossible to provide anything near a comprehensive summary of either the plot or the people who are caught in its entanglements and complexities. Suffice it to say that the film deals with such weighty themes as the intricacies of mother/child relationships, coming to terms with the ghosts from both the private and collective past, and the part denial plays in assuaging our own sense of guilt and responsibility for unspeakable events in history. This denial then allows us to live our lives in unconcerned complacency.

Egoyan views his film almost as a giant canvas and he keeps throwing characters onto it, often without painting the strokes in clear enough detail for us to understand fully what is going on (an apt analogy, given the fact that one of the characters is an actual painter and he deliberately leaves part of his artwork unfinished). Some of the people we meet are fascinating and complex, while others seem underdeveloped and too enigmatic to make much of a contribution to our comprehension of the material. Occasionally, we get the nagging impression that a number of the minor characters and plot strands are left hanging in a state of unresolved limbo. Moreover, the film occasionally lapses into a pedantic tone, as if the writer felt it more important to provide us with a history lesson than involve us in a drama. What promises to be an enlightening character study frequently becomes a polemic.

Structurally, `Ararat' is very complex, with the director cutting back and forth between characters in the present, one character in the past, and the events of the genocide as depicted in the film being made. Egoyan deserves credit for bringing it all together even if the very artifice of the format ends up distancing the audience from the emotional immediacy of this very grim subject matter. `Ararat' is more of an intellectual exercise than an emotionally involving drama, but it does serve a salutary purpose in raising the public's consciousness about a shameful, tragic moment in history that has for too long gone unrecognized by the general public.

At the first time when I saw `Ararat', I was strongly impressed. To say the truth there were some parts of the film which were ununderstandable for me, after I watched that movie for several times and could understand it at all and create my own viewpoint.The scenario was a real chaos, and the characters were not chosen right. The example of this is Raffi (a puny guy). Finally, I think Egoyan tried to introduce genocide in some way that the audience that knows nothing about armenians and armenian genocide could understand and be sorry for armenians. However, I don't think he really succeeded in this stuff, because Egoyan created this film from the standpoint turks are bad human kind. It's wrong in some points. I agree that at that time of history, there was an awfull religion-fanaticism and turks did awfull things, but their generation is not as responsible for that as we suppose. On the other hand I am sure there was a real genocide and generally all armenians are sure, cause of our ancecstors stories. And I am sure no one could socialise with the people who could do that. However I am not going to create my future on the idea there was an armenian genocide and turks are murders. This is a wrong point of view. Of course, there is a pain and the pain will always be there in the armenian-man's heart, as our mothers were raped, our fathers were killed, our brothers and sisters were procured from our mothers abdomen and killed not even born. But armenians should live by the future, not by the past and so must do turks. Noone is guilty, maybe just some persons who were alive at that period of time but not now.

In 1915, Turkish forces attack Van and its Armenian inhabitants in eastern Turkey. Clarence Ussher is an American missionary doctor who witnesses and later writes about the destruction. Arshile Gorky is an artist who loses his family and escapes to America. Ani (Arsinée Khanjian) is a modern day professor, and an expert on Gorky and his painting of his mother. Edward Saroyan is directing a film about Van and hires Ani intending to incorporate Gorky into the story. Ani is facing trouble at home. Her son Raffi (David Alpay) is rebelling and sleeping with his step-sister Celia (Marie-Josée Croze). Celia blames Ani for the death of her father. Raffi decides to go to Turkey. When he returns, he's stopped at customs by David (Christopher Plummer). David has family problems of his own. In Saroyan's film, half-Muslim Ali (Elias Koteas) plays the cruel governor Jevdet Bey and Martin Harcourt (Bruce Greenwood) plays Ussher.

Tackling the Armenian Genocide is a tricky matter. Director Atom Egoyan does it by entangling with many issues of art, history and truth. It is a very commendable effort diving deeper than a simple reenactment which the character Saroyan does in the movie. I love every scene where these issues are touched on. I do wish Raffi is played by a more compelling actor. I love Croze but her character adds an unnecessary layer. Her character is struggling with her father's suicide. That emotional conflict is too similar to Raffi's father's death from attempting to assassinate the Turkish ambassador. Raffi and Celia could easily be combined into one character. I would actually keep Croze who is the better actor of the two. With such complex emotions, the cast of characters would be better off with some minor trimming. The same goes for David's family. The movie needs a little bit of emotional trimming.

The high frequency of attacks on this film as being 'proArmenian propaganda' is a testament to the power of the movie. The historical accuracy or moral culpability of the Turks vs. the Armenians in this conflict is not within my knowledge base to judge absolutely, nor that of most of the posters on IMDB, I suspect, so I will just judge this as a movie.

Egoyan has managed the trick of avoiding a simple tearjerker black hat white hat polemic like Mel Gibson's The Patriot (or Braveheart or Passion of the Christ or We Were Soldiers or Chicken Run or....) or even 'Schindler's List' by the technique of distancing the audience to one remove, by making his film actually about an Armenian-Canadian filmmaker making a film about the Armenian Holocaust. Obviously, 'Ararat' still manages to stir up powerful emotions, but by also examining the responses of the film cast and crew and their loved ones and others with whom they come into contact the film attains a more mature and introspective value.

I really liked this movie. I've read review's by Berardinelli, Ebert, NYTimes, and Wash Post, and they are unduly critical, possibly based on the director's capabilities. However, I feel that the characters and the story interweaved masterfully, and that the relationship of Christopher Plummer and his gay son are an interesting parallel with the intolerance of the Turk's (majority Muslim's) and the Armenian's (minority Christian's); Also, the way that Raffi carried his hatred second-hand and that hatred got even more trumped up with the Elias Koteas current-day character was effective in showing how these clashes can sustain over generations upon generations.

Another superb aspect of the film was how the cinematic production within the movie acted as the segway between the current and past events because the actors are also characters in the "main" movie; that's a structural piece of "real" cinematic mastery.