ARARAT

                        ARARAT

               Harry Hagopian, LL.D, KSL-KOG

Strange! Just as Atom Egoyan had hesitated for long years before making the film

 ARARAT, I too hesitated for long days before attending its première showing at the

 Regus Film Festival in London last night! And at the end of the viewing, I listened

 with absorbing interest to this affable and charismatic man - almost an Armenian

 version of Hugh Grant with his diffident mannerisms - as he explained how he had

 struggled for years with his own perceptions before he could connect sufficiently

 with this chapter of Armenian history and later reproduce another major film. Ararat

 was shown at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival last summer, and was released

 across the USA earlier this month.

Armenian Canadian Atom Egoyan already enjoys an iconic status as a ‘film-maker’,

 having directed Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia's Journey as three top-notch

 motion pictures. Ararat, his latest, is an entirely different feat. It represents a poignant

 labour of love whose title is a straightforward reference to Mount Ararat – an

 Armenian national symbol par excellence - that is both unassailable in its

 significance and unattainable in its splendour.

The ambitious scope of the film strives to relate an historical event. It then places this

 historical event in context for those living today. It later reflects upon this event

 through the medium of several intertwined modern stories. So what is Ararat all

 about? The overriding theme of the film is the attempted genocide of the Armenian

 people by the Ottoman Turks in 1915. The historical archives are replete with

 tangible evidence that two-thirds of the Armenian population - more than one million

 children, women and men - was cleansed during World War I as a result of an ugly

 and bloody reign of terror. However, despite scholarly assertions and the records of

 eyewitnesses, the Turkish government to date denies the occurrence of those

 malevolent let alone malignant atrocities.

This complex film - for it is complex, though the minutes slowly peel the stories open

-         was shot in Canada. It amplifies the experiences of the American medical

 missionary Clarence Ussher who witnessed the genocide from Van in eastern

Turkey. The filmmaker Edouard Saroyan (Charles Aznavour) is making a motion

 picture about the Armenian genocide. Along with his producer (Eric Boghossian), he

 recruits an historian, Ani (Arsinée Khanjian), to advise him. Ani is an expert on the

 painter Arshile Gorky, who left Armenia for New York at the time of the genocide.

 Her son Raffi (David Alpay) decides that he must visit Armenia to understand the

 legacy of his people. On the way back to Canada, a customs inspector in the person

 of David (Christopher Plummer) stops Raffi in the belief that the film cans he is

 carrying are being used for drug transportation. Meanwhile, his stepsister Celia

 (Marie-Josée Croze), with whom he is having a sexual dalliance, has escalated a

 feud with his mother to a critical public level.

At times, Egoyan assumes the role of schoolteacher and shows what happened to

 Armenians during the genocide by means of slow re-creations of history being done

 for the film-within-the-film. An interesting character in the film is Raffi who has

 unanswered questions about the death of his father shot fifteen years earlier while

 attempting to assassinate a Turkish diplomat. In fact, one intense aspect of Ararat is

 Raffi's relationship with Celia. She has a genuine and smouldering character, driven

 by great passion and even greater guilt. She believes that Ani was in some way

 responsible for her father's death, and she will not let go of the idea. Actress Marie-

Josée Croze erupts this character to volcanic life with a fiery performance that trail-

blazes the screen. But one gripping moment of individual power for me was the scene

 in which a half-Turkish actor (Elias Koteas) argues against the importance of putting

 too much reliance upon the past. It carries so much resonance for Armenian-Turkish

 non-realities today!

There is both substance and symbolism to Ararat, and its willingness to deal with the

 effects of a near-genocide was powerful and educational enough to spark connections

 and references in my own mind. As I watched the various overlapping scenes of

 murder, decapitation, rape and plunder, I could almost remember how my own family

 had suffered some of those humiliating and terrifying atrocities during their own

 flight for survival from Anatolian Turkey in 1915. And that is where, not unlike

 Atom Egoyan’s search for a connection, the film connected with me at too.

In my opinion, the most laudable achievement of Ararat is that it raises the awareness

 of the movie-goer to the many parallels between the Armenian genocide of 1915 and

 the subsequent genocides of our modern world - be they the Jewish Holocaust,

 Cambodia, Haiti, Rwanda, Sudan, the Balkans or many other episodes where the

 cruelty of man manifested itself with sheer impunity. After all, and as the film

 reminds us hauntingly, Hitler defended his elimination of the Jews by stating, ‘Who

 remembers the extermination of the Armenians?’

What truly matters now is the impact Ararat might have upon non-Armenians. I hope

it is ‘alive’ enough to encourage British filmgoers to pause for a moment and mull

over an unacknowledged tragedy that struck Armenians some eighty-seven years ago.

 In so doing, I would not wish them to hate Turks or seek revenge. For me, that is both

 wrong and futile. I would simply like them to help liberate this chapter of

 contemporary history by helping re-shape it too.