Movies

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

The main focus of Atom Egoyan's "Ararat" is the Armenian Genocide. Beyond that it addresses the nature of truth and its representation through art (such as the issue of whether a movie should recreate historical events). The genocide itself is also the subject of the recent movie "The Promise".We may never know the full extent of what happened in April 1915, or why the genocide faded from memory. What we do know is that suppressing the memory of a tragedy creates the risk that it will get repeated. Indeed, it was only thanks to the reports from some witnesses - among them Clarence Ussher - that the Armenian Genocide came to light.I recommend the movie, and I hope that in addition to drawing attention to the genocide, it draws attention to how World War I caused much of the bloodshed that has happened since.

This is a very flawed movie by a well-regarded director. One major problem is the star-role presence of his ubiquitous (in his films) wife, who can't act well and simply cannot use her voice expressively or effectively. Her monotonic droning, in film after film, is irritating.Another is that he doesn't have the directorial chops to film in an epic style such as the Armenian battle scenes require.The lopsided voting pattern here seems to be the result of ethnocentric ballot-box stuffing. All those "10"s could only mean that thousands of Egoyan's compatriots have invaded the board and voted politically rather than esthetically or rationally.