In
the year 300 Armenia became the first country in the world
to declare Christianity as the official religion, but ultimately
the small country fell under the control of first the Arabs,
later the Persians, and the eventually the Ottoman Turks,
all of whom persecuted Christians, producing a diaspora. In
1828, Russia wrested a portion of the Armenian homeland from
Persia, and in 1878 the Congress of Berlin awarded Russia
part of the Armenian homeland from Turkey. On the eve of World
War I, Armenians were scattered throughout several states.
Ararat, directed by Atom Egoyan,
is a film about a film. We see a few scenes staged for the
background film, also entitled "Ararat," which might
have been an exciting epic about the slaughter of one million
Armenians in 1915 by the government of Turkey, which forced
them on a death march to what is now called Syria. Instead,
the foreground film is largely about members of an Armenian
family in Canada who are haunted by the memory of the genocide.
The one most transfixed by the genocide is eighteen-year-old
Raffi (played by David Alpay), son of a father who assassinated
a Turkish diplomat and a mother Ani (played by Arsinée
Khanjian) who is an art historian. The father apparently committed
suicide when Raffi was very young, perhaps the original source
of the young man's angst, but in any case we see how the memory
of the genocide evokes deep emotions within the contemporary
Armenian community. Ani is promoting her recent book about
an Armenian artist named Arshile Gorky (played by Simon Abkarian),
who depicted a sorrowful family of the genocide on canvas,
and she soon becomes a technical adviser to the film within
the film. Raffi, meanwhile, went to Turkey to satisfy his
curiosity about the genocide and also to provide film footage
for his mother's book tour. When he returns to Canada, he
is stopped by a customs official, David (played by Christopher
Plummer), because he is carrying four reels of film marked
"UNEXPOSED," and he refuses to allow David to open
the reels. Clearly, nobody travels with unexposed film, but
David does not want to ruin the handsome young Armenian's
life by calling a dog to identify the contents. Through interrogation,
Raffi admits that by another person gave him the reels, so
he naïvely believes that they actually contain unexposed
film. Accordingly, David, who is prolonging his last day of
work before retirement with an extended interrogation, decides
to let Raffi go, even though the contents are obviously contraband.
Thus, the plot of the foreground film is uncomplicated. However,
the foreground film is a prop for the background film, which
deals with the Armenian genocide. One character in the background
film plays a Turk, is half-Turkish, and presents the official
Turkish government's view that war was in progress, so many
died. (He could have mentioned that the Turks regarded the
Armenians as allies of their enemy, Russia, which was then
threatening them. After World War I the Soviet Union took
over Armenian lands, Armenia was established as a republic
within the Soviet Union in 1936, and Armenia became an independent
state with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.) Raffi
replies that the Armenians were Turkish citizens who posed
no threat; scenes from the background film vividly show the
slaughter of unarmed women and children. The film, which is
thus more propaganda than plot, ends with a title that indicates
that documentation of the atrocities of the genocide are in
a book by Dr. Clarence Ussher, entitled An American Physician
in Turkey (1917). If only the background film had been
made!. MH
I
want to comment on this film
