Ararat

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.

I have hesitated to see this film for many reasons, some might be obvious but others might not. I watched it on Starz the other night. I had questioned whether to go ahead and view or instead watch "All or Nothing" by one of the cinema's most intriquing directors, Mike Leigh, on another cable network. But, for better or worse, I am glad I saw this film. For starters, I have always been an admirer of Atom Egoyan. I feel he was snubbed, and should have been a best director Oscar nominee for "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997). I think he is very brave for making this film for surely even within the Armenian community there are many political povs about this issue and about how they should feel about it. I will refrain from getting into the politics of the subject matter of "Ararat" and into my own personal view about this controversy which is very much riddled in red tape for reasons I understand all too painfully well. Sadly, the rest of the world probably never will. Except, I will say, that the problem is two-fold. One, there is the Armenian conflict that Turkey and Turkish people do not accept or have outright distorted their view of history. Second, there is the reality that Turkey and the Turkish culture is very much hated, despised and oppressed in the West for reasons that partially stem from this issue as well as many others. I challenge any of you to go to a Blockbuster, or any other video store and try to find a Turkish film. I am 99 percent you will not find one even though the list of outstanding Turkish film directors is one which includes the likes of Yilmaz Guney, the director of "Baba" (The Father) "Yol" -- who was admittedly censored considerably in Turkey until recently (he died in political exile in France some 20 years ago), Ali Ozgenturk who directed "At---The Horse" and Sinan Cetin who directed the outstanding, internationally praised political comedy "Propaganda." I could also mention Serif Goren, Zeki Okten and so many others. It is a simple truth that while the West criticizes Turkey for various infractions, including its' treatment of ethnic Kurds, yet it continously suppresses the Turkish culture and Turkish people itself.Having grown up in the USa, and being half-American, I can validfy that this is the way it is. It may not be intentional, but all of us know that it some form or fashion 'the n----rs of Europe" tag applied to Turkish-Europeans applies to all of us. Now having said this one might think, I am going to criticize Egoyan for making this film. But, he has every artistic right to make "Ararat" and everyone, including people in Turkey, have a right to view this film and make their own decisions about this film. I do not consider "Ararat" a hate film as some others like "Midnight Express" and arguably "America, America" are. However, I do think the character of Ali, played by Elias Koteas, who was great in "The Thin Red Line" is cookie-cutter stereotype of Turkish-Westerners. He seems like a deliberately crude person who says things like "let's just drop our 'expletive' history" and he seems like a person devoid of any intellectual curiosity. Even though I have nothing against homosexuals, I don't think it was appropriate to make this character homosexual either. By doing so, the character plays into a stereotype that Billy Hayes utilized in his book (perhaps novel would be a more accurate word) "Midnight Express." This is the notion that all Turks are 'secretly gay' and therefore they are 'violent towards women.' My statements may seem outright ridicilous but few of you have probably endured the subliminal hatred that each of us who live in the West know to be a true fact of life. The film in a film scenes of the film actually are not ones which bother me as much. There is clearly a dark history here and it somehow has to be approached diplomatically but until the abuse of the Turkish culture is also approached, I am afraid as it was once said in "Cool Hand Luke." --- we will always have a failure to communicate.

A terrific rough style cast in a story about denial and the truth of living in denial. At first, I thought the movie was about the Armenian Genocide, but its not. It's about a families struggle in the present day world trying to live knowing that the genocide is their past. Many interesting characters are introduced throughout the story. The plot thickens as characters appear in the movie and the movie within the movie. The issue about denial is stronger than the truth. The issue about Turkey is made many times and is the last thing we see at the end of the movie, still, this is not a movie about the Genocide and Turkey's true intentions, its about the aftermath and the denial that becomes the truth.

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.

A film within a film within a film that plays out through a myriad of interconnected stories sewn into a giant multi-colored tapestry. The so called "Armenian holocaust" is the fabric from which director Egoyan spins his narrative, and this event so heavily laden with emotional baggage, becomes almost impossible to approach with intellectual objectivity. The lines between fact and fiction are constantly blurred as in a scene where the protagonist walks onto a movie set about the "holocaust" and one of the characters scolds her, not as an actor, but as a very real character from that time. At times this constant commingling loses focus, but Egoyan's heartfelt attempt to bring back the dead through his art imitating art approach, succeeds surprisingly well. Although the "holocaust" is shown graphically, Egoyan is aware that we connect most deeply with that to which we can all relate, and this is shown right from the start as an artist attempts to transfer his childhood memories of murdered loved ones to a painter's canvas; the details of a mothers dress . . . the skin of a mothers hand . . . her fingers knitting a quilt. The vivid colors and simple reality of that hand are so compelling they can reach out across decades of despair to caress the forehead, reduce fever, and impart a sense of belonging - a reason for being. From this inauspicious beginning, Egoyan is able to arrive at a much greater truth: the inherent need for human beings to believe in something - whether or not that belief is grounded in reality or can be proved scientifically. Finally, ARATAT concludes with a simple truth that is just as powerful: the immeasurable but often neglected joy at being able to look upon our loved ones and to hold them in an embrace of life.