Ararat [DVD] [2003]

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.