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178 reviews in total

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33 out of 44 people found the following review useful:
politically charged, 29 July 2004
Author: zzz05 from New haven, ct, usa

The high frequency of attacks on this film as being 'proArmenian propaganda' is a testament to the power of the movie. The historical accuracy or moral culpability of the Turks vs. the Armenians in this conflict is not within my knowledge base to judge absolutely, nor that of most of the posters on IMDB, I suspect, so I will just judge this as a movie.

Egoyan has managed the trick of avoiding a simple tearjerker black hat white hat polemic like Mel Gibson's The Patriot (or Braveheart or Passion of the Christ or We Were Soldiers or Chicken Run or....) or even 'Schindler's List' by the technique of distancing the audience to one remove, by making his film actually about an Armenian-Canadian filmmaker making a film about the Armenian Holocaust. Obviously, 'Ararat' still manages to stir up powerful emotions, but by also examining the responses of the film cast and crew and their loved ones and others with whom they come into contact the film attains a more mature and introspective value.

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46 out of 73 people found the following review useful:
A hopeless hodgepodge, 20 May 2007

Author: rlange-3 from United States

I don't have a dog in the historic fight here, but expected to learn something I didn't know from the film. As a history buff, I had high hopes of insight into the historic context of the time, the actions taken by the two sides, how they viewed the situation, and/or why they did what they did.

Instead, the opportunity was squandered on a long, drawn out, absolutely boring melodrama involving some obscure family conflict, a gratuitous if titillating sex scene, some bizarre injection of homosexuality and atheism creating stress in an aging character with nothing at all to do with the history, and a lot of drippy and pointless personal drama. The only history to be seen consisted of one dimensional Turks and Armenians shooting each other, especially the former shooting and raping civilians of the latter.

The actual historical actors were like cartoon characters. One might, for example, have liked to know that the American doctor was doing in the middle of Turkey. Or why the Turk commander felt he needed to do what he did. Instead, the historic conflict is treated with all the depth of a Road Runner cartoon, while the main focus is on some kid and his girlfriend going through an emotional life crisis. Either, done well, might have been interesting. Both mashed together and done poorly are like a cherry pie with asparagus filling.

Boring, unenlightening, and patched together, it was as if someone had taken some cheap footage of war from a century ago and randomly spliced in parts of various soap operas. What a waste of an opportunity.

This movie just sucked. I don't usually express my opinion that way, but frankly it just sucked. I can understand why either side with a political axe to grind might feel compelled to love or hate the film, but having none I found it almost unwatchably boring.

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30 out of 51 people found the following review useful:
Well-made movie about a negelcted subject matter, 12 December 2002
Author: andyandi from New York City

Seeing "Ararat" in a more or less mainstream American movie theater in New York City was a very encouraging experience. First of all I'd like to mention that I am not of Armenian background, however I read a lot about the Armenian genocide from both Turkish and other perspectives.

To show a movie concerning this so negelcted topic gave me new confidence in humanity and justice. I like the fact that Egoyan does neither blame the Turkish civil population in the past(something that very often happened concerning the Germans, and the so-called "universal guilt" which simplifies the problems and stems from a clearly racist worldview) nor the Turkish people of today. This movie is not about putting blame on people that happen to be of Turkish ethnicity. However, Egoyan does justifyably blame the Turkish leaders of the past; portrayed by a role in a Genocide movie that is shot within this film. In order to be honest, there is no need to alleviate what happened, so Egoyan shows the brutality that the Armenian population had to face. But the movie revolves around the most frustrating matter concerning the Armenian genocide: Denial. The denial is what is so constructive to both the Turkish conscience and the life of so many Armenians even now. If only the Turkish government would admit to the fact that the genocide took place (there are more than enough files that prove the genocide), a new beginning would be possible. In "Ararat" the viewer is allowed to empathize with the unbelievable pressure under which current day Armenians live due to their history which remains denied. Hitler and Stalin's Holocausts during the Second World War took place at a larger scale than the Armenian genocide, however the Germans admitted to their past and even paid and still do pay reparations. On the other hand, the genocides on the Native Americans, the Jews in Russia, etc. are largely ignored, so is the Armenian and the Assyrian genocide. But denial is cannot be justified, people have to be aware of what has happened in their country. Otherwise what we believe in is simple anarchy. The movie shows that some Armenians use the genocide as a catalysator for other problems "to have a case" like the character Celia. A development due to the genocide denial that is very destructive and that can even lead to paranoia. Others just feel the urgent responsibility to educate the world like Ani. A responsibility which is haunting and consuming because it seems to be so hopeless. Eventually, it is up to the Turkish governement and the enlightened in Turkey to be fair and to push for a recognition of the Armenian genocide and to treat its little remaining Armenian minority in a fair way. The Turkish press however keeps on building its argument around old racist stereotypes against Armenians, even today. In a current survey 85% of Turkish school children said that "Armenians are bad", a situation that has to be changed if we believe in human rights and dignity. Even if Egoyan's movie has some little flaws (like the supposedly all so nice clothing of Armenians while being persecuted. What an oxymoron...), the idea goes into the right direction. Not to juge the Turkish people, but to inform them and the world. And this information is denied to the Turkish individuals by their own government. It is still illegal in Turkey to call the Armenian demise a genocide...

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66 out of 124 people found the following review useful:
A Turkish-American's perspective...., 9 February 2004

Author: Tilly Gokbudak from Roanoke, Va.

I have hesitated to see this film for many reasons, some might be obvious but others might not. I watched it on Starz the other night. I had questioned whether to go ahead and view or instead watch "All or Nothing" by one of the cinema's most intriquing directors, Mike Leigh, on another cable network. But, for better or worse, I am glad I saw this film. For starters, I have always been an admirer of Atom Egoyan. I feel he was snubbed, and should have been a best director Oscar nominee for "The Sweet Hereafter" (1997). I think he is very brave for making this film for surely even within the Armenian community there are many political povs about this issue and about how they should feel about it. I will refrain from getting into the politics of the subject matter of "Ararat" and into my own personal view about this controversy which is very much riddled in red tape for reasons I understand all too painfully well. Sadly, the rest of the world probably never will. Except, I will say, that the problem is two-fold. One, there is the Armenian conflict that Turkey and Turkish people do not accept or have outright distorted their view of history. Second, there is the reality that Turkey and the Turkish culture is very much hated, despised and oppressed in the West for reasons that partially stem from this issue as well as many others. I challenge any of you to go to a Blockbuster, or any other video store and try to find a Turkish film. I am 99 percent you will not find one even though the list of outstanding Turkish film directors is one which includes the likes of Yilmaz Guney, the director of "Baba" (The Father) "Yol" -- who was admittedly censored considerably in Turkey until recently (he died in political exile in France some 20 years ago), Ali Ozgenturk who directed "At---The Horse" and Sinan Cetin who directed the outstanding, internationally praised political comedy "Propaganda." I could also mention Serif Goren, Zeki Okten and so many others. It is a simple truth that while the West criticizes Turkey for various infractions, including its' treatment of ethnic Kurds, yet it continously suppresses the Turkish culture and Turkish people itself.Having grown up in the USa, and being half-American, I can validfy that this is the way it is. It may not be intentional, but all of us know that it some form or fashion 'the n----rs of Europe" tag applied to Turkish-Europeans applies to all of us. Now having said this one might think, I am going to criticize Egoyan for making this film. But, he has every artistic right to make "Ararat" and everyone, including people in Turkey, have a right to view this film and make their own decisions about this film. I do not consider "Ararat" a hate film as some others like "Midnight Express" and arguably "America, America" are. However, I do think the character of Ali, played by Elias Koteas, who was great in "The Thin Red Line" is cookie-cutter stereotype of Turkish-Westerners. He seems like a deliberately crude person who says things like "let's just drop our 'expletive' history" and he seems like a person devoid of any intellectual curiosity. Even though I have nothing against homosexuals, I don't think it was appropriate to make this character homosexual either. By doing so, the character plays into a stereotype that Billy Hayes utilized in his book (perhaps novel would be a more accurate word) "Midnight Express." This is the notion that all Turks are 'secretly gay' and therefore they are 'violent towards women.' My statements may seem outright ridicilous but few of you have probably endured the subliminal hatred that each of us who live in the West know to be a true fact of life. The film in a film scenes of the film actually are not ones which bother me as much. There is clearly a dark history here and it somehow has to be approached diplomatically but until the abuse of the Turkish culture is also approached, I am afraid as it was once said in "Cool Hand Luke." --- we will always have a failure to communicate.

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70 out of 135 people found the following review useful:
Egoyan's worst., 4 April 2004

Author: ChrisWN from Santa Cruz, CA

I ran out to see this in the theater since Egoyan was one of my favorite director's (that was until I saw this movie), with The Adjuster & Exotica my favorites. His talent has been on the decline since Exotica, perhaps because he can't make a film without his wife in it (Felicia's Journey being the exception). In this film she is awful, but so are most of the actors. This film was the biggest disappointment in 2002 for me. This is a message film & the message is: Turks committed genocide agaist Armenians & genocide is bad. Otherwise, the film did nothing to impart knowledge of the historical events that are supposed to be the basis for the film. The acting is universally wooden. The storyline was poorly written. A completely lifeless film. I'm surprised by all the 10's it has received. 3/10

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21 out of 38 people found the following review useful:
a giant multi-colored tapestry, 24 January 2005

Author: stephen-357 from United States

A film within a film within a film that plays out through a myriad of interconnected stories sewn into a giant multi-colored tapestry. The so called "Armenian holocaust" is the fabric from which director Egoyan spins his narrative, and this event so heavily laden with emotional baggage, becomes almost impossible to approach with intellectual objectivity. The lines between fact and fiction are constantly blurred as in a scene where the protagonist walks onto a movie set about the "holocaust" and one of the characters scolds her, not as an actor, but as a very real character from that time. At times this constant commingling loses focus, but Egoyan's heartfelt attempt to bring back the dead through his art imitating art approach, succeeds surprisingly well. Although the "holocaust" is shown graphically, Egoyan is aware that we connect most deeply with that to which we can all relate, and this is shown right from the start as an artist attempts to transfer his childhood memories of murdered loved ones to a painter's canvas; the details of a mothers dress . . . the skin of a mothers hand . . . her fingers knitting a quilt. The vivid colors and simple reality of that hand are so compelling they can reach out across decades of despair to caress the forehead, reduce fever, and impart a sense of belonging - a reason for being. From this inauspicious beginning, Egoyan is able to arrive at a much greater truth: the inherent need for human beings to believe in something - whether or not that belief is grounded in reality or can be proved scientifically. Finally, ARATAT concludes with a simple truth that is just as powerful: the immeasurable but often neglected joy at being able to look upon our loved ones and to hold them in an embrace of life.

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36 out of 68 people found the following review useful:
Fantastic - and with more layers than you might imagine., 18 November 2002

Author: nkbahar from London, England

If you are expecting a historic epic about the Armenian genocide this isn't it.

Instead it is a finely crafted, tightly directed look at the historical events of 1915 and how it has affected those that followed. Focusing on four generations, from an Armenian artist who survived the genocide in Van through to Raffi, a Canadian Armenian in his early twenties (played brilliantly by David Alpay in his professional debut) you need to know nothing about the history to get something from this film about the nature of humanity.

The direction is Egoyan's usual unusual style - juxtaposing images one on top of the other to stunning effect, although his narrative style of jumping from thread to thread (and generation to generation) does take some getting used to.

This film will be controversial because of the subject matter, but it isn't two hours of Turk bashing, despite what some of its more biased detractors would say. It does take several of the oft quoted explanations for the genocide and answer them head on, but there are no easy answers.

If you want a film that will leave you stunned both thematically and stylistically then this really is it. I'm now arranging to see it for a second time!

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7 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Pure propaganda, 26 October 2008

Author: from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

What a mind-numbing piece of pure propaganda. I simply cannot believe most users gave good reviews for this movie. Not only is this movie simply a bad movie that is extremely difficult to sit through, it's also one that goes to such great lengths to prove its "message" that the fabrications become utterly hilarious.

The director is trying to associate the genocide that took place in Germany with what he proposes was happening in the Ottoman Empire. This desperate attempt is so apparent at some points in the movie that it becomes outrageous. There is a suggestion that the Turks decided to kill all Armenians with a "planned and systematic" decision (a direct quote out of U.N's definition of genocide, mind you!). By the way, these Armenians are the same people with whom the Turks had been living side by side as neighbors, friends, commercial partners.. etc. peacefully in the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years. What is completely laughable about this whole situation is the reason given for this so-called genocide: The claim that Armenians got a hold of finances in the Ottoman Empire and were controlling money markets! This bold lie (which lacks the backing of any kind of historical evidence) shows how desperate the director's attempt is at drawing parallels between the Jews in Germany and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

The characters in the movie lack depth and sophistication. The Turks in the movie are either gay men who are unsure about their identity, drug dealers, rapists or tyrant Pashas. The extreme bias in the movie is so apparent and even the plot weakens and slows down so much at some points that watching some of the scenes is like a torture.

The movie depicts Turks as "possessing the latest technological weaponry", armed against the "poor, innocent, helpless" Armenians. What an outrageous lie. The Turks at that point in the World War I were an extremely poor nation, being attacked at all fronts by imperialist powers such as Britain, France, Italy and Russia, who wanted to get a piece of the "cake" that was the Ottoman Empire. In their desperate attempt at survival, a lot of Turkish soldiers could not even get hold of bayonets, let alone rifles, and did not even have proper clothing for fighting! This was a violent war, and both Turks and Armenians were killed. Why doesn't the movie talk about what the Armenian terrorists and guerrilla did to the Turkish villages? Where are the Armenian bandits who raped and killed Turkish women? This is such a one-sided story that it even justifies an abominable terrorist act such as killing an innocent Turkish diplomat. At one point, one of the main characters implies that such "hatred" towards the Turks, and what they supposedly did, justifies and legitimates the assassinations of lots and lots of Turkish diplomats by Armenian terrorists in the 70s and 80s. The terrorists who committed these acts, according to the movie, are so-called freedom fighters.

I think it's so ironic that Charles Aznavour at some point wonders: "I can't believe how someone could hate us so much, and this hatred still continues". The imagined hatred he talks about does not exist. What exists, though, is the Armenian hatred that shows throughout the whole movie: this movie is filled with pure hatred towards the Turks, and it's not a subtle hatred either.

It makes me sick to the stomach when the imperialist Western powers can so easily blame the Turks for having committed a genocide when their own hands are full of blood from the massacres they've committed both in the heart of Europe, the Americas and also in their colonies. It is extremely hypocritical of them to even talk about "genocide" when they failed to act upon a genocide that was happening before their very eyes in the 90's: the Bosnian genocide. This movie shows how easy it is to manipulate truths and focus on hatred using cinema as a tool.

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84 out of 166 people found the following review useful:
Egoyan disappoints in Ararat, 24 September 2002

Author: Mehmet Turkkan from Ottawa, Ontario

Although it was loudly promoted, I have not seen much positive critique of this film, other than those written by Armenians. When I watched it at the gala opening of TIFF, I wondered how such a dark film was chosen for opening night. There should be some politics involved. Ararat is a chauvinistic story filled with religious symbolism. Evil Turks (Muslim) versus innocent Armenian (Christian). American savior (missionary Dr. Ussher) in troubled lands..Difficult to watch..

Everything seems out of context and hang in the air because a central theme in that time slice of Anatolian history, namely the struggle for more territory between Turks and Armenians is avoided, missed or obscured. As a matter of fact, Ottoman Empire was colapsing and not only Armenians but also Greeks, Slavs and Arabs were trying to get a bigger territory out of it. Anatolian tragedy is still a tragedy even if one of the parties would not be presented as pure innocents. Egoyan had a very powerful story to be told but he missed it badly. He said that he gave voice also the Turks, but there is only one Turk in the movie (Ali) who is depicted as a unrefined, cruel man.

I was expecting better from Egoyan. A twisted story makes a bad film even at the hands of a good artist like Egoyan..

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
A Slight Lecture and Much Praise!, 4 April 2010

Author: S. C. from Canada

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I came across the movie Ararat while doing research for a paper I was writing for school. I watched it hoping that it would give me further insight into the Armenian Genocide. I can honestly say that this movie not only enforced the research I had done, but also led me to new topics I had not yet researched myself. I strongly believe in knowing about the events in a movie before watching it. Otherwise, you can sit through an entire film and not understand the meaning or significance that it holds. For instance, if you watch a film on Gallipolli (a very important battle for the Australians in the First World War) you may not know what it means for the people who were involved (like most people who live outside of Australia). However, if you take time to do a little research before hand you can easily watch a film about it and understand its importance. That said, I believe that this applies to Ararat in the same way. If you don't take the time to research the Armenian Genocide along with other aspects of the film such as the Van Resistance, Arshile Gorky, Clarence Ussher or even Aghtamar Island, you can never fully understand this movie (or any other film about the Armenian Genocide as well). I thought this movie was the perfect mix of storyline and documentation. In my opinion, it presented the facts of the Armenian Genocide accurately and effectively, without turning into a documentary about it. It showed how it still affects the Armenians of today, even though it happened a little bit less than one hundred years ago. How there could still be such denial and hatred between the people who were involved. The fact that we know so much about the holocaust that Adolf Hitler carried out and so little about this Holocaust, that started only 18 years before Hitler came to power, is shocking and deeply upsetting. I recommend this film highly, as not only an important piece on this historical event, but also an excellent film. I must applaud Atom Egoyan for doing this event justice and bringing it to life on the screen.

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