Ararat

Canada / France 2002, 115 minutes
Dir. Atom Egoyan
In English, Armenian with English subtitles
Rating: [R16]
Genres: Drama / Independent, War

Topics: Period - 1910s.

Feat. Arsinee Khanjian, Charles Aznavour, Christopher Plummer, Elias Koteas, Bruce Greenwood, Eric Bogosian

Aroview: A challenging dramatic meditation on the 'forgotten' genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey during WWI, moulded into an epic of history and self-examination by dir. Egoyan.

Aznavour plays a film-director (not dissimiliar to Egoyan) who is shooting a costume drama in Toronto about the genocide, and whose personal life and that around him, ironically comes to reflect the artistic difficulties of representing history with integrity.

As in his other works, Egoyan's narrative structures can seem labyrinthine to the point of contrivance, but here the enormity and importance of the subject matter (a holocaust still denied by Turkey) prevent this crystallising into mere 'cleverness'.