MOVIE MONDAY - ARARAT

“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.” – Albert Camus

Last weekend we watched a 2002 Canadian/French film, Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat”. The film unites several stories quite successfully and is partly a vehicle for the retelling of the Armenian genocide of 1915, partly a film about Arshile Gorky (1904?-1948), an Armenian painter who lived through the genocide in Turkey and migrated to America and also the story of a director making a film about Armenia and the genocide.

Gorky’s last few years were miserable and riddled with disease and mishap, causing him to commit suicide at the age of 45 years in Connecticut, this being significant in the film’s plot. The film’s story is set in Toronto, where Ani, an art historian (Arsinée Khanjian) investigates the life and art of Gorky. She is of Armenian heritage and is immersed in Gorky’s story on several levels. Her son, the young Raffi (David Alpay) is in love with his step-sister, who blames Ani for the suicide of her father.

In parallel with this story is that of an ageing customs inspector (Christopher Plummer) who is on the cusp of retirement. He has a stormy relationship with his son and in order to patch things up he tries to explain his world-view to him by recounting the story of a long interview he had with Raffi, whom he apprehended when he returned from Turkey carrying canisters of exposed film. Supposedly, the film is footage that Raffi has shot in the region of Mount Ararat, to be included in a film about the Armenian genocide that is being made by the famous director Saroyan (played by Charles Aznavour, himself of Armenian heritage).

The film within a film theme brings together the characters and plot elements quite adroitly, but there is some challenging and confronting images of the genocide that will make many viewers recoil in horror. Turkey still refuses to recognise the events of 1915 as genocide which is what Armenians and over twenty other countries call the massive exterminations that took place at that time. In any case the Armenian “Great Calamity” was the cause of the Armenian diaspora and is in any case a flagrant abuse of human rights by the precursor to the Turkish state, the Ottoman Empire.

The film explores several themes, most of them quite melancholy and serious. The relationship between parents and estranged children, suicide, genocide, war crimes, the falsification of history, propaganda, incest, drug trafficking, and artistic inspiration. The film is one which is highly controversial and some people regard it as a masterpiece, while others view it as a flawed piece of cinematic pro-Armenian propaganda. Some people regard it as a trivialisation of an important historical event. I am glad I saw the film, even if it was quite confronting and in some parts badly patched together. It was quite complex and operated at multiple levels, some more successfully than others. Do see it, unless violent images shock you or disturb you.