Ararat

Rating:
Summary: Heartwrenching and Powerful
Review: A very heartwrenching and powerful film detailing just a small sliver of the history of the Armenian Genocide. This movie expertly raises the question of truth and denial and how one seeks/finds it.
Highly recommended for those who see beyond the superficial and who would like to walk away from seeing a movie THINKING and FEELING.

Rating:
Summary: First Genocide of the 20th century, FINALLY A FILM
Review: I saw this movie at the Loews theater in NYC by Lincoln Center.
I went with 3 other people and thought the theater would be empty. To my surprise, the theater was PACKED and we were barely able to get seats (we needed to sit apart)....this was even after the movie had been in theaters for a while.

I know about the 1915 Armenian Genocide where 1.5-2 million Armenians were exterminated (learned about it in college), and was skeptical about how the movie would come out. I think Atom Egoyan had quite a challenge in making it considering there have been NO PREVIOUS MOVIES BASED ON THIS TRAGIC HISTORICAL EVENT and Turkey still denies it. By judging how packed the theater was, and how quiet everyone was while watching it, I think it's safe to say he did a SPECTACULAR JOB!

Reading about it in a textbook is one thing, but watching it on screen is another! If you were not moved while watching this movie then you are probably as heartless as the turks and nazi's who commited Genocide! I recommend any college, university, or high school professors and teachers to use this movie as an aid to lectures on Genocide and Haulocaust. The movie within a movie helps make the history more clear.

If you don't believe me, then read the NEW YORK TIMES review:

"... Ararat is hands down the year's most thought-provoking film."

It's not just a story that deals with the Armenian Genocide and issues of truth and denial....it deals with so many other issues people in present day society live with every day. There is a struggle between the loyalty toward family vs. loyalty toward significant others.

Put all the secondary and tertiary story lines and themes aside. This has been the first movie about the ARMENIAN GENOCIDE-the first Genocide of the 20th century (before the haulocaust) and it was long overdue. It's a tragic chapter in the history of humanity where Armenians as well as Greeks, Assyrians and other Christians were also persecuted and massacred.

Hopefully this movie will educated more people about what happened so we won't be destined to repeat history. This is evident in history when Hitler gave encouragement to his followers by saying.....who after all remembers the Armenians?

Read the book "an american physician in turkey" by Clarence Ussher; the movie is based on it. It's a story about an American missionary Physician who goes to Turkey to help the Armenians during the Genocide. It's an eyewitness account of what happened...

Rating:
Summary: Definitely An Egoyan Film
Review: At least now audiences can have access to this remarkable film that fails almost as often as it succeeds, but is definitely worth the watch. The fact that this film did not gain a wider release in a country that prides itself on freedom of speech says something of the power of special interest groups OUTSIDE the USA to stifle creativity and free speech within it. I've seen much worse films gain a much wider release. Again not Egoyan's best but definitely not a dud. In places it's even sheer genius.

Rating:
Summary: Well-intentioned but disjointed
Review: I'm surprised how many people have given this movie 5 stars. I can imagine an important movie being made about the horrors of the Armenian genocide, but this is not it. Narrowing down a few of the many plot lines would have helped. Still, I found it one of the more 'watchable' of Egoyan's movies.

Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction
Review: Ararat is a very thoughtful movie which only introduces Armenian Genocide. To understand Ararat well though, someone might need to watch it again since there is a lot going on at the same time. After watching this movie, some people ignore it and with their eyes closed try to move on, but what they realy don't understand is that if the world would recognize Armenian Genocide when it was happening and do something about it, then maybe Holocaust wouldn't happen because Armenian Genocide made Hitler think that history can forget massive massacres. A nation that gunfires at the past, gets a shot from a rocket from the future.

Rating:
Summary: important but flawed view of an ethnic tragedy
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: a lousy boring weakly scripted movie with big Zzzzzz
Review: don't know what the purpose of making this movie except that certain racial interest is trying to follow the hollocaut step. the script is so loosely written almost without a focus, so weak that has to use some totally unrelated young people sexual scenes to trick some people watching this pathetically directed, scripted and acted movie. i've wasted about one hour trying very hard to get something out of this highly praised but really hyped movie and then, decided to drop it. life is too short, man, don't have time to wake up the dead and mourn for them again and again, move on, man, just move on. i don't like to waste my hard working earned money to watch some politically or ideologically oriented movie, only focused on "the history owes us an explanation, certain people owes us big..." k se la se la, what happened, happened, let go and move on.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing touching film...
Review: I found this film amazingly interesting, informative and emotional (at least for me)..... In general it seemed for me a movie that deals with how much people are affected by history, how history Defines who are we and vice versa. It's a quest to find one's history so he can live in the present without all those aching questions and lack of information.... In a more personal note, I identified in so many ways with some of the character since I'm a granddaughter of holocaust survivors - wanting to know more about your family but having no tangible source to lean on... I guess my people were "lucky" in getting the holocaust acknowledged well as for the Armenians they still have to fight for it - which is so bothersome for me.....

Rating:
Summary: ARARAT is a complex and ambitious work
Review: I had no idea what to expect with Atom Egoyan's new film ARARAT. It has received many negative reviews and scant few good ones. As a big Egoyan fan, I was worried. Would this be the first of his films that I wouldn't enjoy? And the subject, the Armenian Genocide... I just couldn't imagine what Egoyan would attempt that put off so many people. Needless to say, I was completely surprised at how amazing this film is.

ARARAT is not a film about the Armenian genocide. It is a film about truth and history. About how sometimes the way we tell a story is more important than the story itself. He uses the Armenian genocide as the backdrop... the subtext... There's a film within the film that IS in fact about the Armenian genocide. I think the people who didn't like Egoyan's film were looking for something more akin to the film within the film. I was much more interested in the film Egoyan chose to make.

In this film, Charles Aznavour plays a well-known director who is making a film about the Armenian genocide. His style is very over-the-top, with a strong Hollywood epic feel to it. After hearing a lecture by Ani (Arsinée Khanjian), an art history scholar who has recently written a book about a famous Armenian artist who survived the genocide, he and his writer (Eric Bogosian) decide to enlist her help on the movie as a historic consultant, in order to provide accurate details on the film even as they stretch the truth even further to make a dramatic story. Ani's son Raffi is also hired as a production assistant on the film in the hopes that he will come to better understand what happened between the Armenians and Turks and why. Raffi's father was killed in a failed attempt to assassinate a Turkish diplomat 15 years ago. Raffi also has a step-sister, who was the daughter of Ani's first husband. She blames Ani for her father's death (murder? suicide?) and continually appears at Ani's book readings asking disturbing questions linking the subject of her book (who also committed suicide) with her first husband. And there's even more...

There were so many things I admired in this complex, ambitious film. I love the way Egoyan jumps around in time and doesn't really give you any clues... you just have to sit back and figure it out. The film within the film... the one actually about the Armenian Genocide... is stilted and overblown, much like most big Hollywood productions, but not without the horror and tragedy inherent in situation. There are some amazing scenes in ARARAT, especially the ones where Egoyan tries to find an understanding in the Turks point of view regarding the genocide and their inability to accept it. And amazing performances as well. Charles Aznavour is terrific as the director. Christopher Plummer is superb in a quiet performance as an airport customs officer who interviews Raffi on his return to Toronto after a trip to Turkey. And how delightful to see Arsinée in such a large, dramatic part. She really shines in this difficult role. David Alpay is fairly strong in the tricky role of Raffi, especially in his dramatic scenes with Christopher Plummer.

One of the many criticisms I've read about ARARAT is how the dialogue is so expository. I didn't find it so at all. One of the points of the film is how the story of the Armenian genocide has been lost, and that people don't talk about it. There's a lot of explanation on what happened in that period of history told through dialogue, which is as it should be in this film. After all, it's NOT a film about the genocide itself, but who it has been dealth with. Plummer's David, when trying to determine if Raffi is smuggling drugs explains that while it's true, trained dogs could easily sniff out the drugs, he prefers his method of talking to the suspect to find out the truth through dialogue. It's a powerful moment, especially in retrospect when the entire film is revealed.

ARARAT is complex, ambitious, thought-provoking, and masterful. I was so delighted by it after expecting something very different.

Rating:
Summary: "Ararat is where it all happened"
Review: This movie does deserve a 5/5 stars. It shows how determined the Armenians are to getting their point across. I myself am 1/8th Armenian and I didn't really know that all that Armenians wanted was to get an appology. They don't care about the land lost and the blood shed. It is extremely frustrating when someone has hurt you and doesn't want to admit to what they did.