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Ararat
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price:
$14.99
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$12.99
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Manufacturer: Miramax
Starring: Brent Carver, Bruce Greenwood, Arsinée Khanjian, Elias Koteas, Christie MacFadyen
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Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: PLUMMER,CHRISTOPHER
EAN: 0786936221008
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: Miramax
Manufacturer: Miramax
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Miramax
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2003-07-22
Running Time: 115
Studio: Miramax
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
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Editorial Reviews:
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After coming home from Turkey, a young man recounts to a customs official, how his life changed during the making of a film about the Armenian genocide.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-MAY-2005
Media Type: DVD
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Movie about Armenian Holocaust
Comment: I wasn't sure what this movie was about until I watched it. Let me warn you, this movie is slow to start, and has a rather strange beginning (brother & sister sleeping together). Be patient, it gets better about 20 minutes into the movie. It also jumps around a bit from storyline to storyline. However, we enjoyed the movie in the end.
Another shortcoming; the movie tries to depict the brutality of the Armenian Holocaust, but does a rather poor job of this. Being Armenian, I sometimes heard my grandmother talk about her escape from Armenia (at the age of 14) during the holocaust. The movie may show mass murder, rape, and violence by the Turks against the Armenians; but the brutality is lacking compared to what actually happened. Enough said.
Recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 600 Ancient Seeds Of Imperfection
Comment: First, thank you 2007-2008 Men's World Figure Skating Champion Jeffrey Buttle for skating to the score of Ararat this recently completed skating season.
This was the only Egoyan film I had not yet watched, for several reasons, but when I watched one of your first Grand Prix skating long programmes this past season, I was so enthralled by the score, I considered watching the film. After your breathtaking Worlds programme, I was finally inspired to watch the film, and purchased it.
This film would have been more effective if the director presented the Armenian sequences as genuinely crafted extensive historical flashbacks (to show the extent of the massacres) with enhanced context and cinematography and acting performances, and provided more cohesive continuity, instead of using clichéd soundstage re-enactments discordantly interpolated throughout the underdeveloped and choppy present-day plotline.
I understand that Egoyan was trying to use an innovative method to capture and maintain the audience's attention - threading together a summarized record of the history of the Armenians and their massacre with poignant depictions of present-day "diaspora" Armenians in Canada struggling with identity, cultural, and ethnic crises, but, because of the gravity of the topic, he should have scaled back the innovation and instead focused on cinematically illustrating in enhanced historical detail Armenian history and the massacre, and broadened the overall acting performances by providing depth to the characters.
What Egoyan does demonstrate, either intentionally or intentionally, is that the self-victimization of the Armenian characters, and their explicit, unhindered, relentless focus on the Armenian massacre, impeded their ability to not only understand each other and their own individual crises, but their ability to reconcile with each other to preserve and defend and promote their culture and language (which they did retain) and traditions and history, to preserve and defend and promote their national identity and roots.
The Armenian characters, not even the mom and Saroyan the film director, did not realize their acculturation to the country they were living in (which happened to be Canada) dramatically minimized and virtually muted their ethnic connection to Turkey/Armenia.
They were so intent on trying to publically prove the specific event of the massacre - which they failed to do because Egoyan only presented one instance of killings that occurred during the siege of the city of Van - that they forgot about presenting Armenia's historology and culture and achievements, and, when Elias Koteas tried to discuss the historical context of the massacre, and Saroyan immediately dismissed him, Saroyan's reaction and unjustified explanation for the reaction negated the gravity and credibility of the massacre itself, and discredited the overall self-victimization of the Armenian characters.
We have a group of people who were massively decimated, and that type of mass carnage is obviously horrific, but what must we automatically sympathize with the descendants of the massacred ancestors who were born and raised in a completey different geopolitical location? What if the ancestors were "illegally occupying" Turkey? What if they were an indigenous group of people with draconian traditions whom were actively revolting against the Turkish powers? What if they were the progenitors of Turks and the first occupants of the land who had been systematically killed because they refused assimilation? And for those of us already familiar with Armenian history, what if the armed Armenian nationalist groups (Hunchaks, Dashnaks, etc) and the Armenian populace were plotting to join forces with the Russian Czar's Christian army to seize Anatolia and the Caucasus in order to re-establish ancient Anatolia, which led to Turkey countering the nationalistic forces in order to prevent another war front in the Ottoman Empire?
Massacre or no Massacre, the Armenians in the film had zero interest in learning about the cultural backdrop of their own ancestry (not even Rafi, he only wanted to validate his mother's stories because the thought of his mother as a liar was clearly more upsetting to him than any massacre), nor did they have any remote interest in celebrating and preserving their heritage or achievements, except to promote a painting and an autobiography that proved a massacre. Their sole interest was to pretend to be victims - despite being born and raised in Canada and acculturated in a Western lifestyle - and dismiss any attempts at examining their historical background and observing cultural traditions.
The film depicts "diaspora" Armenians as a culture firmly fixated on a massacre and firmly alienated from Armenian culture (past and present).
The cultural reference to the pomegranate was an astronomic miscalculation and indication that Egoyan himself is oblivious to history: the pomegranate, contrary to Armenian belief, first emerged as a fruit and as a cultural and culinary symbol in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and India, then spread as a cultural and culinary symbol throughout the entire Middle East, and Asia, Eurasia, Greece, Spain, Mexico, and beyond.
The symbolic meaning of the pomegranate was clear - pomegranates only grow in dry conditions, the Armenians only feel and grow and "progress" when they are void of and ignore their own history and culture (except language), pomegranates root and decay in wet conditions, the Armenians mentally decay when floods of critical questions and doubts and history in its full context inundate them.
Returning to the diaspora concept, none of the Armenians, except Rafi, exhibited any tangible desire to visit Turkey/Armenia, nor did they view their ethnic land as a desirable location to return to, an actual ancestral land where they could unite and rebuild their culture and nation. None of them, except the enigmatic non-Armenian David (Christopher Plummer) exhibited any reticence or discontent with being acculturated into Canadian/Western culture, none of them appeared to feel alienated or insulated from their own ethnic roots, not even the girlfriend, who was strictly frustrated because of Ani's trivialization and dismissal of her father's (and Ani's second husband's) death.
Nothing the Armenians did indicated they wanted a restoration of their original homeland and nation, that they vicariously related to their ancestral homeland, they engaged in any kind of ethnocummunal solidarity, and that meant the Armenians were not "diaspora" because diaspora indicates a nation scattered from an ancestral homeland that desires to re-unite and return to the homeland.
And, strangely, nothing the characters presented conclusively proved a "genocide" or even massacre occurred.
Egoyan's presentation of the film's strongest theme - memory versus facts versus the fabricated realities people con themselves into believing to make their lives bearable - indicated the massacre itself either never occurred or was exaggerated.
I had the impression that since they were ashamed that their ancestors were unable to defend themselves against violence they themselves possibly instigated, they were exaggerating the circumstances of their deaths to transform the shame and embarrassment and guilt into justifiable scapegoatable anger towards the Turks.
Egoyan ignored the historical fact that during the early 1900's the Turks and other Muslims were also being raped and massacred and expelled from their homes and entire villages and cities by the Russians and Britain and France. The Russians laid inhumane waste and destruction to Anatolia, which resulted in raging starvation and epidemics that killed Turks, in addition to Armenians.
He also ignored the historical fact that Armenians fought side by side with the Ottomans and were serving in the Ottoman government, and that the Ottomans never killed Armenians in Istanbul, Izmir, or Aleppo.
And while the Armenian tragedy was real and horrific, Egoyan ignored the fact that other national groups suffered massive killings at that time, many of which were at a larger scale then the Armenian killings, thus negating the use of the intellectually dishonest and distorted and revisionist use of the term "genocide".
During WWI, 1,500,000 Armenians were killed, 1,700,000 Russians were killed, 1,327,000 French people were killed, 1,100,000 Austrian-Hungarians were killed, 908,371 British people were killed, 460,000 Italians were killed, etc, etc.
Saroyan asserts massive genocidal systematic killings occurred based on one eyewitness account, and Rafi's mom insists the killings occurred based on one painter's childhood, and both accounts are repudiated by Egoyan when he has Saroyan refuse to discuss the historical backdrop of Turkey in 1915, when he has Rafi's mother continuously exaggerate the painter's feelings and insist her husband was a hero and insist on dismissing the death of her second-husband out of guilt because she admittedly caused him to commit suicide (which correlates to Armenians feeling guilt about possibly instigating violence against themselves and being unable to defend themselves), when Egoyan has David (Plummer, in an Oscar-deserving performance) violate criminal laws by releasing Rafi despite the heroin in the film reel, when he has Rafi construct his lie to David in order to subconsciously reveal his version of the truth, and when he has Saroyan's film partner place Mount Ararat close to the city of Van which is geographically incorrect.
The sum total of which Egoyan directly illustrates to us that truth is subjective and virtually unknowable, which ironically means that, according to Egoyan's own thematic logic, it is unknowable whether or not an Armenian massacre occurred.
This film can either be a 5/10 for its face value (lackluster everything, linear acting, only Plummer was intensely impressionable and effective) or a 10/10 for its fathomless subtextual, hermeneutical, semiotic value.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Ararat Tells Devastating Story with Power and Style
Comment: Director and writer Atom Egoyan--who has won universal acclaim for such films as Exotica (1995), The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Where the Truth Lies in 2005--is generally not one for presenting his movies in straightforward narrative formats. His 2002 masterpiece Ararat unfolds in overlapping layers that blend the past with the present, art with reality, and government-sanctioned history with eye-witness truth.
In its opening scenes, Ararat gives you the impression that the primary story is likely to involve a turgid family drama in which a fiercely intelligent woman named Ani (portrayed by the brilliant Arsinèe Khanjian), her son Raffi, and step daughter Celia are struggling to cope with the death of her husband. Ani moves forward with her life as an art historian giving lectures on her latest book and working as a consultant on a film about the Armenian massacre of 1915. However, the step-siblings Raffi (played by David Alpay) and Celia (Marie-Josèe Croze) seem less well adjusted and start a disturbing romantic relationship at the same time that Celia begins to sabotage Ani's lectures with disruptive personal questions about her father.
On one level, Ararat is an extremely sophisticated movie about the painful lessons of history and the healing beauty of art. On another level, it is a kind of ghost story about the life and legacy of the great painter Arshile Gorky (1904?-1948). Haunted himself by the atrocious reported massacre of Armenians in 1915, the spirit of Gorky, as portrayed in Ararat, takes the form of different things for different people following his suicide in 1948. In what we call the real world, Gorky emerged as a leading artist of the twentieth century. Along with such geniuses as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, his work helped define the art movements known as Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. For the director character within the movie Ararat, the painter is an inspirational cultural icon whose personal story embodies the larger tragic history of his people. To Ani, he is the fascinating subject of her latest book. To Ani's stepdaughter Celia, he is a painful reminder of her father's questionable death; and to Raffi he is an important piece to the puzzle of his own identity. (Director Egoyan's own deep respect for Gorky may be noted by the fact that his son is named after the painter.)
The story of one character in the movie takes us inside the stories of others as Raffi, returning from a journey, is interrogated at length by a customs official named David (Christopher Plummer). Unknown to either of them, the official's son happens to be a guard at the museum where Ani gives a lecture; and his son's lover is an actor in a film on which Raffi worked as a production assistant. The sequences involving the making of a movie--about the Armenian massacre and Gorky's narrow escape from it--within this extraordinary movie are among the most exceptional in the film. At times, it is uncertain whether you're watching scenes from the film in production or whether the film Ararat itself is now in a flashback mode depicting the terror of murder, rapes, and forced migration that characterized the massacre. The answer seems to be both but even that conclusion becomes questionable when the actors shooting the movie break character for various reasons. At moments such as those we realize just what a superb filmmaker Atom Egoyan truly is.
This stylish report on the Armenian genocide, which some still deny ever happened, is told with mesmerizing cinematic eloquence using an astoundingly brilliant cast that, in addition to those already mentioned, includes: Elias Koteas, Raoul Bhaneja, and Bruce Greenwood. The adult Arshile Gorky is brought broodingly to life by Simon Abkarian, and Garen Boyajian does an admirable job as the adolescent Gorky.
For those whose lives are not defined or daily obliterated by the horrific butchery that characterizes existence in such places as modern-day Darfur or World War II Nazi Germany, the word "genocide" comes across as a sociopolitical contradiction almost too insane to contemplate. The movie Ararat not only forces viewers to confront the insanity of that contradiction but to take full measure of the brutalities, abuses, and corruption that can destroy lives for decades when allowed to go unchecked. From that perspective, the political, spiritual, and simple human importance of Egoyan's film can hardly be overlooked.
by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of "The Bridge of Silver Wings"
and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Story of the Armenian nation
Comment: This was by no means ambitious film by Atom Egoyan. By addressing complex relationship of a contemporary family between a mother, her son from her first marriage to an Armenian terrorist/freedom fighter (depending on who is talking about the poor lad); her stepdaughter who happens to be her son's lover as well as her deceased husband's daughter from previous relationship, we get to learn about Armenia's history, it's people, art and region. One of the main points of the movie is to address year 1915 genocide of the Armenian nation by Turks what neither Turks nor the rest of the world have ever fully acknowledged perhaps due to the fact that everyone was busy fighting the WWI. On pretense of making a historical film about the event, we witness the usual: brutality, muder, rape. But underneath it all is a story about family and complex emotions that bind any family together. Choices that we make, affect our families. The ones that feel consquences of these choices the most are the children. It seems that for those children it is unbearable that they are unable to control events around them and stop the loss of the people they innately love. As their parents perish in war, sacrifice themselves for ideals over their family, or seemingly commit suicide over life's disappointments - their children turn to most self-destructive ways or feeling of being alive. They choose their own path that often is a path of death which puts them closer to their lost parents they still love and miss terribly. But their death is a slow one and it is thru pain and hurt that they come to the light and get to enjoy the life around them. As I said in the beginning, it is overly ambitious movie but a nice tribute to a nation, human self sacrifice and love that binds us all at the end.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dissappointed to watch it!
Comment: It looked like in the movie that they are questioning a time in the history. However, it is made very poorly that it only shows the story from one side which makes the idea not at all objective! It is all acting basically to create attention and speculation. It makes me curious about the whole picture and the intention of Ermenians promoting this idea???
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