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 Ambitious
portrait of the Armenian genocide of the early twentieth century
is less about history than its present-day resonance throughout
the Armenian diaspora, focusing primarily on happenings around a
modern-day film about the event. Often fascinating, but a less aloof
style might have more emotional impact. Co-starring Charles Aznavour
and Elias Koteas; directed by Atom Egoyan. (1 hr. 55 mins.; R) —
BILGE EBIRI
Opens November 15
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
Spotlight: Director Atom Egoyan
"My original impulse was to tell a straightforward historical story,"
says The Sweet Hereafter's Atom Egoyan, whose new film Ararat
tells the story of the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which well
over a million people—two thirds of Armenia's population—were
murdered by the Turks. "But I'd have to show extreme scenes of unspeakable
horror, and as a filmmaker, I can't do that without a degree of
self-consciousness. In the end, I want the film to be about the
stories parents tell their children, how small moments of misunderstanding
create huge generational riffs." Ararat, set in the present day,
tells the story through an Armenian family working with a film crew
to make a picture about the war, and is the Oscar-nominated director's
most personal film: Much of Egoyan's family was lost in the massacre,
and his son is named after one of the picture's true-life protagonists,
painter Arshile Gorky. "You want people to know what happened, but
also what continues to happen," Egoyan says, stressing how many
Turks still deny that the war took place. "When I told my son about
the genocide, he asked if the Turks said they were sorry. If you
tell him the truth, the trauma gets passed on. I want to create
a fantasy of how that cycle might be broken—the healing which
can occur when someone invests themselves in someone else's history
in an emotional, responsible way."
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