Ararat (2002)

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1. 

   Siskoid

   In Atom Egoyan's Ararat, a young man becomes obsessed with proving the 1915 Armenian genocide really happened (Turkey denies it), and a lot of commentary on this film is about whether or not it did. This would be missing the point. What Egoyan is more interested in is how we me go about proving ANYTHING in our history (including our personal history) ever happened, or how and why we would ever deny any event. Who has the right to tell their version of the event, and how truthful and accurate can any of those versions be. Is it all open to interpretation and subjective? To do this, the director filters historical events through cultural artifacts, always distancing us and his characters from his subject matter. So the memory of a child who experienced them becomes a painting based on a photograph he carried, which becomes the focus of a book on art history used in a motion picture with an agenda. The aforementioned protagonist goes back to Turkey to try and get evidence of the genocide and comes back with his own changing narrative, while his mother who wrote the book mentioned above is denying a dark part of her own history. I'm only scraping the surface here, and omitting plenty of examples, subplots and characters that create the critical mass of inference that make Ararat such a conversation piece. Stopping short at the inflammatory movie-within-a-movie is doing it a disservice. 10 years 4 months ago
2. 

   idjutt

   Surprisingly weak for a Egoyan movie. The movie in the movie is a one-sided mess of rape and murder, the border official scenes were not credible, some otherwise good actors didn't do a good job here. I hope there are some better movies on the genocide than this one, and that Egoyan can make brilliant movies like The Sweet Hereafter, Calendar and Felicia's Journey again. Now is the time to see Exotica to regain my good impression of him. 10 years 4 months ago
3. 

   L Lawliet

   Too many lies, too many propagations, nothing more! 11 years 9 months ago

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