Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13756 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-10-13
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: Armenian, English, French, German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 115 minutes

Synopsis
ARARAT, Atom Egoyan's mysterious drama about the horrors of the largely unknown Armenian genocide in Turkey, unrolls through a film within the film (also titled ARARAT). Jumping back and forth in time, Egoyan weaves together the lives of several people. Ari (Arsinee Khanjian), an art historian, is an advisor on the film. Her son Raffi (David Alplay) is part of the film crew. When Raffi travels to Armenia to gather some additional footage, he is detained by a customs agent (Christopher Plummer) and remains in custody for most of the film. Meanwhile, Raffi's stepsister and girlfriend Celia (Marie-Josee Croze) is haunted by her father's suicide. These and other stories within ARARAT are ostensibly linked through the film within a film. Yet, it is each character's quest for truth which binds them thematically and drives the plot. The film is populated with thematic twins, as each character's individual struggle is mirrored in the plight of the other characters. Egoyan works from his own script relying heavily on references to Arshile Gorky's painting The Artist and his Mother and Clarence Ussher's historical document, AN AMERICAN PHYSICIAN IN TURKEY.

Customer Reviews

Powerful, breathtaking and beautiful
You might understand some of the film content more if you are familiar with the story of the Armenian genocide, however I don't think it is essential to appreciate the way this event would affect anyone connected with it, even generations on. A film that has genocide as its core subject matter is going to be powerful - but the beauty of this film is the way that it handles the effects of this tragedy and also ties in unrelated subjects, giving the film more dimensions. There are several sub-plots that revolve around main story which is about the making of a film, and although this makes the story complex, the lives of the main characters are all linked together skillfully. To explain the story the director takes us through history and shows the genocide from the point of view of those that experienced it and also from those who had not even heard of it. It uses a customs officer to handle the theme of crossing borders and cultures, and making of the film within the movie aids the telling of the history. It jumps between themes of family relationships and of identity, and there are some painful and dramatic confrontations, and it is not an easy film to watch sometimes. But it deals very well with some painful real-life subject matter, and is a fantastic addition to any collection of world cinema

A complex, brilliant and bold film
I watched this film before work going to work one morning - I intended only to preview the first 5 minutes to see what style to expect (I'd never seen of Egoyan's previous films) but I couldn't take my eyes of it and watched the entire film through and thought about it most of the day. The film demands a lot of the viewer, with its non-linear narrative throwing the (still disputed) events of the Armenian genocide through a prism of different characters. With the modern cinema being dominated by safe formulaic pap, I'm glad that it's still possible for people to get the funding to make intelligent films like this. If you're looking for a beautifully crafted film that will really make you think then Ararat would be an excellent choice.

Gave me a headache
ARARAT is a sincere attempt on the part of the film's creators to acquaint the audience with the horrors of the genocide delivered by the Turkish government upon its Christian Armenian citizens during the First World War, and which resulted in the deaths of over a million, or about two-thirds of the Armenian population. The screenwriter tried to tell the story in an imaginative way. Unfortunately, the screenplay came out too clever to the point of being a boondoggle, and I came away disappointed and with a headache. Four different timelines and several subplots converge into such a mess that it'll be difficult to write a lucid synopsis.

Gosh, where to begin?

In several brief flashbacks, it's 1931 and Armenian artist Arshile Gorky (Simon Abkarian), having emigrated to North America, is shown painting a portrait based on a photograph of him and his mother taken in Turkish Armenia in 1912. Gorky's mother was subsequently killed in the genocide, and her memory haunts him deeply.

In the recent past, art historian Ani (Arsinee Khanjian), an Armenian living in Toronto, gives lectures on the life of Arshile Gorky and uses his painting of 1931 as a backdrop for her presentations . Ani is also a collaborator with film director Edward (Charles Aznavour) in the making of a film, also called ARARAT, about the Turkish army's seige and capture of the Turkish Armenian city of Van in 1915 based on the memoirs of an American missionary, Clarence Ussher (Bruce Greenwood), stationed there. The inhabitants are subsequently burned alive, mutilated or tortured, or driven out into the desert where most are raped, bayoneted or shot. A young Gorky (Garen Boyajian) is one of the survivors. The 1915 timeline, and the events surrounding the Van abomination, are depicted in the scenes of the film within the film, ARARAT within ARARAT.

The last and most recent timeline has Ani's young, adult son Raffi (David Alpay) returning to Canada after spending time in Turkey filming footage of Van's ruins that could be used in the making of Edward's ARARAT. On his way through Customs, he's stopped by David (Christopher Plummer), a humorless inspector spending his last day on the job before retirement. In an extended sequence that apparently lasts hours, David interrogates Raffi about the contents of several film cans (of supposedly exposed film). David suspects they contain heroin, but listens to Raffi's earnest explanation of the ARARAT film and the events that inspired it because the young man is obviously a True Believer.

There's another subplot, which occurs before Raffi takes off to Turkey, involving Ani, Raffi, and the former's stepdaughter Celia (Marie-Josee Croze). Raffi is sleeping with Celia despite the fact that the latter believes Ani drove her second husband (Celia's father) to suicide. The relationship between Ani and Celia is decidedly not warm and fuzzy, and Raffi is caught in the middle. Raffi's own father, Ani's first husband, was an Armenian "freedom fighter" killed while trying to assassinate a Turkish official.

Have I lost you yet?

Perhaps director/producer/writer Atom Egoyan got so wrapped up in the artistic aspects of his creation that he lost his way amidst unnecessary complexity and simply blundered into his original goal, which was to produce a film that indeed thrusts the Armenian Genocide into the viewer's consciousness (and will perhaps throw gasoline on the smoldering embers of hatred of those who'd prefer not to forget past tribal vendettas). The David/Raffi and Ani/Celia interactions might better have been left on the cutting room floor and the old adage, "keep it simple", taken to heart. Certainly, truly great and memorable films about the bloody and savage business of ethnic cleansing can be made. SCHINDLER'S LIST comes immediately to mind. Would that Egoyan had seen it and taken notes on style.