Ararat

Rating:
Summary: A CINEMATIC MOUNTAIN TO CLIMB
Review: (...)BR>There were so many things that I disliked about this film. First, the Raffi character, granted he is young, is so cloying, lacking in fortitude and animation that someone, namely me should punch this guy. Secondly, the most excruciating part of the movie was when the actor(half-Turkish) playing the Turkish general responsible for the local atrocities, initiates a discussion of the question of Turkish culpability with the director. This shamelessly didactic scene was the equivalent of, and I think I would prefer this, someone beating me upside the head with a baseball bat having the Koran inscribed on it. If you want to see a film that exposes fascist genocidal behavior watch Klimov's "Come and See" or Spielberg's "Schindler's List", but DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.

Rating:
Summary: Complex + Egoyan = Brilliant Story...
Review: Ararat is a brilliant and complex story about a young man being stopped in customs with a suspect bundle of tin containers containing undeveloped films. The customs officer (Christopher Plummer) begins a long and tedious interrogation in regards to the tin containers, which has it roots in a 1915-1918 genocide of Turkish Armenians. The story that the young man reveals is tied to him, his fathers death 15 years ago, stepfather's death, a film director, a film production, his step sister, his mother, a gay couple, a famous painter, and how the Armenian holocaust affects them in today's society. The cross-examination also brings a symbolic meaning to whether the 1915-1918 genocide of Turkish Armenians, which is still denied to this day by the Turkish government, ever took place. Egoyan brings another cerebral story to the audience as he displays his vast knowledge of human behavior and the denial people deal with under unpleasant circumstances. In addition, the script is a clever creation as it exposes human nature in natural dialogues from a wide variety of multifaceted characters who bring different lights to the issue at hand.