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ARARAT Send This Review to a Friend
The Loews Lincoln Square was crowded for a first show on a Sunday and later performances that day were sold out. The picture playing was "Ararat," hardly getting the mass advertising of a "Harry Potter" film. Why the crowds? As I suspected, a conversation with a man afterward confirmed that New York's Armenian community was primed for the run of writer-director Atom Egoyan's film and eagerly awaiting to see how it told the story of the elimination of some one million Armenians by the Turks in 1915, wiping out some two-thirds of the Armenian population at the time.
"Ararat," which opened the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, is clearly the work of a director with an artistic vision who wants to tell his tale in an original way and link it to the wounds still felt by Armenians today. But the personal intricacies that he has devised are cumbersome and the screenplay is accordingly convoluted. The film is on strongest ground when we are made to watch the slaughter of women and children and the heroism of men fighting the tyranny as such scenes appear in a movie being made in Canada--a film within a film--with Charles Aznavour as a filmmaker of Armenian descent.
The personal stories in Egoyan's drama become heavy but the history is the strong point. Much of Egoyan's screenplay concerns painter Arshile Gorky, who was a boy when the atrocities occurred, and his painting "Portrait of an Artist and His Mother" is a centerpiece of the film as a link with the past and with the culture of Armenia. The artist is played by Simon Abkarian. Egoyan interweaves a story involving Ani, an art historian, portrayed by dark-haired and striking Arsinée Khanjian, her son Raffi (David Alpay) and his stepsister Celia (Marie-Josée-Croze). Elias Koteas does a good job as the actor of Turkish descent who has a role in the film being shot as a villainous Turkish persecutor of Armenians.
Raffi is stopped at customs on returning to Canada with unexposed film in cans that a customs inspector thinks contain drugs and spends much time questioning him. The interrogation provides a format for recounting history and Christopher Plummer gives weight to the situation, which sometimes seems less than credible, by his believable acting as the inspector. Much personal baggage of family history is explored involving Ani, Raffi and Celia, and there's a gratuitous conflict between the inspector and his son.
But Egoyan, born to Armenian parents, accomplishes at least part of his obviously heartfelt mission. When he directly addresses the mass slaughter with vivid, horrifying scenes he etches a reminder into the consciousness of viewers, and that is the result that is meaningful--striking a blow of memory for the fallen and against those who claim it didn't happen or take other measures to cover-up the painful history that Turkey and others would prefer to forget. A Miramax Films release.
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