Ararat on DVD (2002)

Average rating: 63%

from 110 members

6 Critics reviews
10 Members reviews

Starring:	David Alpay, Eric Bogosian, Charles Aznavour
Director:	Atom Egoyan
Studio:	MOMENTUM PICTURES
Certificate:
Genres:	Drama
Languages:	English
Released:	13/10/2003

Brief synopsis of Ararat

ARARAT, Atom Egoyan's mysterious drama about the horrors of the largely unknown Armenian genocide in Turkey, unrolls through a film within the film (also titled ARARAT). Jumping back and forth in time, Egoyan weaves together the lives of several people. Ari (Arsinee Khanjian), an art historian, is an advisor on the film. Her son Raffi (David Alplay) is part of the film crew. When Raffi travels to Armenia to gather some additional footage, he is detained by a customs agent (Christopher Plummer) and remains in custody for most of the film. Meanwhile, Raffi's stepsister and girlfriend Celia (Marie-Josee Croze) is haunted by her father's suicide. These and other stories within ARARAT are ostensibly linked through the film within a film. Yet, it is each character's quest for truth which binds them thematically and drives the plot. The film is populated with thematic twins, as each character's individual struggle is mirrored in the plight of the other characters. Egoyan works from his own script relying heavily on references to Arshile Gorky's painting The Artist and his Mother and Clarence Ussher's historical document, AN AMERICAN PHYSICIAN IN TURKEY.

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Critics Reviews

Radio Times

Even in a world seemingly inured to atrocity, how can the crime of genocide be so easily forgotten? That's the question posed by this angry diatribe against the actions of Turkey, which, in 1915, slaughtered over a million of its ethnic Armenian population. Turkey has never apologised and — until now — the world has overlooked the tragedy. It's brought to our attention here by Canada's most respected writer/director, Atom Egoyan (who is of Armenian descent). Beginning with a film-maker's attempt to shoot a movie about the massacre in Turkey, Egoyan fashions a complex story that flashes back and forth in time, revealing the events leading up to the slaughter and its impact on subsequent generations. The movie-within-a-movie storyline has a real morbid grip, and utilises some horrifyingly effective imagery, but the labyrinthine plot tends to diminish our emotional response to the outrage, as we are constantly distanced from the event by the convoluted chronology of the piece.

Sight and Sound

"...Egoyan creates a dense system of poetic correspondence by editing across time frames, and the impression one has of archetypes echoing through the ages is irresistibly poignant..."

New York Times

"...[A] profound reflection on historical memory....ARARAT is a multilayered work that burrows ever more deeply into its subject as it goes along..."

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Members Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

a film lost

A customer from Rye, Sussex , 27/05/2005

Shindlers List took a genocide and made it understandable through its terrifying horror. This took a similar genocide, with its no less brutality and beastliness, with all the horror of a nation turning upon the defenceless that it should be protecting, and trivialised it with a rather stupid story line about a did he or didn't he try to smuggle heroin through customs in film cases.... My wife is Armenian, she felt disappointed and let down.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful

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Disappointing history lesson

CLTW from Kent , 12/07/2004

Atom Egoyan's films have always been challenging for the viewer but generally they have had more substance than this heartfelt but incredibly preachy diatribe.

There are numerous quite separate story strands which lead to the various protagonists encountering each other but unlike, for example, a Claude Lelouch film these unlikely coincidences are never explained nor are the characters given sufficient backgrounds for the actors to make the viewer interested in the individual plights of those they are playing.

Thus we are confronted with a very disjointed flashback-laden drama which never loses an opportunity to sledgehammer home the probably very worthy message about the genocide suffered by the Armenians.

3 out of 4 people found this review helpful

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Good, but doesn't live up to expectations

A customer from Camberley, Surrey , 10/01/2006

'Who remembers the Armenian Genocide' are words reported to have been said by Hitler when justifying the Jewish Holocaust. Today the Armenians have succeeded in gaining recognition for this terrible genocide, although the other Christians in what is now Turkey, who suffered the same fate, have not. As I have an interest in the Genocide og the Greeks in the same period, and the two crimes are linked, I looked forward to Ararat as a serious study. Unfortunately it was not cohesive, storylines with no real connection moved apparently at random through the film. Not only was the subject of genocide treated with kid gloves, but many scenes gave the impression that the Turkish denial, that it was important to move the Armenians because they were a threat to Turkey, fighting on the side of Russia, is true. The resistance by some to extermination is not explained, and one is left with the impression that the Armenians were rebelling against the lawful government, not fighting to survive extermination by that government. One thread was totally irrelevant and would have been better in a totally different type of film. This could have been more important than Schindlers List, but the director didn't dare to tell the real story.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

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