Canadian Film Forum

Grand_Shaman · Administrator Data inscrierii: 26/Oct/2007 Mesaje: 112

"Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?"

Tabita · Trimis: 11/01/2010 18:21 Titlul subiectului:

“Nobody does…”

Hmmm… I’m starting to like this guy, egoyan… his wife..not so much... she’s everywhere! It’s somehow tiring.

Just recently I saw another movie by Egoyan, “Adoration” (2008). It develops two “motifs” from “Ararat”: the terrorist father and the naïve transgressor (the scene also takes place in an airport, at customs).

I was thinking that Raffi could represent the audience… the people who watch Egoyan’s “Ararat”, not Saroyan’s. He sees/listens to the two points of view and he decides which one is true. He, of course, decides upon the right one. That is what Egoyan wants his audience to do…

Like I said in class, I see the bits with Gorky’s life as an explanatory note. They are neither part of the present, nor of the past shown in Saroyan’s movie. They could be a note both to Gorky (for obvious reasons) and to the painting (for the scene with the hands).

Ali (Elias Koteas), the half-Turkish actor, is in reality half-Greek. I wonder if Egoyan casted him just because “he was good for the part” or because he did not want/find to cast any Turks.

One of Raffi’s best scenes is the one at the customs, when David says something about Gorky being Turkish. Raffi’s expression at hearing this is memorable. It’s like you can see on his face the sorrow of all Armenians ever having been mistaken by Turks. He then corrects him saying, with the calmest voice, that Arshile Gorky was Armenian.

nico_kerekes · Junior Data inscrierii: 16/Mar/2009 Mesaje: 9

I wonder whether Gorky would have become such a great artist if the genocide hadn't taken place.... he had survived the massacre, thus a sad experience made him become a renowned artist.

Through characters like Raffi and Gorky, Egoyan emphasizes the transmission of trauma from one generation to another. It is an exploration of the devastating emotional effects of the past. ARARAT exposes the fragile nature of our links to the past, and its vulnerability to the loss of memory. Raffi realizes during his travels in Anatolia that what is the most terrible is “for the people, the loss of any remembering what was.”

In my opinion another message in this film (sent to us through the use of photographs, icons, paintings) is that IMAGES form our historical memory.

TEACHER: The middle paragraph is actually an unacknowledged rip-off the book
"Filmography of world history" by Deanne Schultz
Such debts should be clearly marked (quotation marks!) and their true author should be duly acknowledged

Chioran Claudia · Trimis: 13/01/2010 18:44 Titlul subiectului:

The extermination of the Armenians is for Edward Saroyan like a pomegranate fruit. All he wants to do is to “eat it”, meaning to know and to let the world know all about it.
However, it is not essential to “eat it “all. Is enough, by his own words, to taste one of its grapes to feel that you have eaten the entire fruit. His film is such a grape, bigger enough to make us wonder: what if the extermination of the Armenians and its horrors actually happened ?

ralucarat · Trimis: 16/01/2010 19:35 Titlul subiectului: Ararat

It is a very complex film. I saw it like a puzzle made up of a number of stories, each of them being told by another person: the film about the Armenian genocide -“Ararat”-which is the central plot, told by Saroyan and Rouben, and some side stories: that of the Armenian painter Arshile Gorky told by the art professor Any, who again has her own complicated life story and that of the customs officer David, who is in his last day of his work before he is retired. Through out this mixture of stories Egoyan expresses different sides of the same historical event – the Armenian genocide- and how this event affected the characters. Every character involved in Egoyan’s film has his own connection to history and his own version of the events. There are those who know the history from documents, through personal research – like Saroyan, Rouben, Marty, Ani – who strongly believe that their version of the history is the only possible truth; and those that find out about the past history from the others, like Raffi, Celia, Ali and David, and have many unanswered questions. I think that from this last category Raffi resembles with the young generation who desperately wants to find its own version of the truth and not take for granted what the others say. The whole film is a continuous struggle for the hidden truth about the Armenian genocide. But in the end which is the truth? Who is entitled to tell us the truth? Those that know what suffering from past is, or those that try to ignore the past and regard it as it never existed?
_________________
Raluca Rat

viorica · Junior Data inscrierii: 10/Dec/2009 Mesaje: 6

Pour répondre à la question posée, je ne peux que vous dire que notre identité a parmi les nombreux ingrédiants de sa composition la mémoire de l’histoire nationale, familiale et personnelle aussi. Alors, c’est bien natural que ceux qui sont d’origine arménienne cherchent à montrer leur histoire avec ses douleurs et les horreurs souffertes à cause du génocide provoqué par un gouvernement incompétent de cette époque –là. Une fois le mal fait, il ne faut jamais l’oublier et chercher à crier partout dans le monde , par l’intermédiaire de la force artistique et politique pour que de telles horreurs ne se répètent plus. Cette histoire-là nous concerne tous, comme un virus, comme une maladie qui doit nous effrayer et nous réveiller à une réalité qui nous détermine à unir nos forces pour lutter contre et ne pas rester indifférents ! Pour cela il faut être informés correctement et faire des fouilles non pas pour propager la haine ou l’esprit de la vengeance mais pour rendre hommage à ceux qui ont souffert à cause de la guerre, du génocide. Le film, par tous ses personnages et les petites histoires, nous révèle le désir ardent de certains arméniens qui cherchent à laisser des traces aristiques du génocide contesté par les turcs, comme une épreuve évidente de cette horreur , pour les générations suivantes, pour l’humanité...Ils ont le droit de faire connaitre au monde leur histoire et de nous faire frissonner...

adela_bm2007 · Trimis: 01/02/2010 12:29 Titlul subiectului:

Pour Atom Egoyan, il s'agissait d'une affaire personnelle parce qu’il est armenien. Histoire d'un génocide qui, quatre-vingt-six ans après, est toujours nié en Turquie, où il a été perpétré, et continue d'être largement ignoré ailleurs. Egoyan s'attache surtout à décrire les ondes douloureuses que le génocide continue de produire, aujourd'hui, sur les héritiers lointains de l'horreur. Dans Ararat, c'est la mémoire de l'événement qui est en jeu. Et ils sont une demi-douzaine de personnages qui s'y frottent, à la recherche de la vérité et, bien entendu, d'eux-mêmes. On verra épisodiquement Arshile Gorky, un peintre qui échappa, enfant, au massacre, s'exila à New York et s'y suicida dans les années 30. Ani, historienne de l'art, qui s'est attachée à entretenir la flamme de l'artiste, est la veuve d'un activiste mort.. Autant de trajectoires perturbées par le doute, qui s'entremêlent d'une époque à l'autre, dans l'écheveau de plus en plus serré imaginé par Egoyan. Le cinéaste a l'art de (se) poser les bonnes questions : qu'il s'interroge sur la vérité historique parasitée par l'imaginaire ou sur les impasses de la memoire il touche juste. Mais les protagonistes, eux, sont pris en otage du dispositif. Leurs faits et gestes servent essentiellement de commentaires aux idées de l'auteur, ils n'incarnent que des concepts. On retrouve les thèmes clés de l'oeuvre d'Egoyan : les aléas de l'identité ou les rapports entre l'image et LE REEL. Soucieux de fuir un académisme qu'il semble dénoncer à travers les images ringardes du film dans le film, le cinéaste a élaboré une laborieuse chaîne de situations où de belles idées de cinéma tournent à vide. Le grand film ¬ « historique » ou non ¬ sur le génocide arménien reste à faire.

Grand_Shaman · Administrator Data inscrierii: 26/Oct/2007 Mesaje: 112

Grand_Shaman · Administrator Data inscrierii: 26/Oct/2007 Mesaje: 112

ale · Trimis: 30/06/2010 19:00 Titlul subiectului:

An overwheming movie! A great one! I think it was the film I liked the most of all seen together.

It reminded me of Bluebeard by Vonnegut, who discusses this period in the Armenian existence.

"Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" This is also what Hitler told his military commanders before his genocide against the Jews. Well, Hitler was right, nobody really remembers what happened to the Armenians (we don't really learn that in the History classes), but Hitler's dids are indeed remembered.

The film bring front to front thow Canadians belonging to two different ethnic groups: the Turk and the Armenian. Though they were borne in Canada and have little relation with their country of origin, a discussion about the past of their people rises controversies. They are representatives of their people through their believes, which they sustain. The past rises passions, especially for Raffi, maybe because of the age and the implication of his father in the Armenian cause.

The end is also great: the cop, who put all his life in the service of the people by catching drugdealers, will let the naive Raffi go in his last day of work, although the boy has drugs, because he believes that the Armenian is too naive and he is really innocent. This also rises another question: if Raffi was so naive that he didn't check the "film" he had in the bag and found himself with a package of drugs don't we also have the right to judge him as naive in his beliefs? What if he is too passionate about th cause and not rational? Maybe this is what a Turk would say as an explanaition.

Gabi Rosus · Trimis: 07/07/2010 20:03 Titlul subiectului:

Ararat is in my opinion one of the greatest movie ever made. It reminds me a lot of the Last King of Scotland which talks about the other horrible genocide that took place in Rwanda. I think the younger generation get a distorted truth of what realy happened. But who can tell the thruth of past events? Only the one that lived it and succeded to survive. History showed us many times that from among us always will rise up a sick mind that believe in the purification of a nation.