Arnet818 This is an excellent film, and one that truly shows the thematic power and artistic depth that springs from Egoyan's sensual style and non-traditional narrative.The story's plot follows the production of a fictional film, a conflicted son in search of meaning, a retiring Canadian customs official, the artist Gorky, a scholar, and an entire history of a people plagued by genocide. Each plot line and most of the central characters are woven together in the most adroit, symbolic, and meaningful fashion, making the film a comprehensive study of truth, family, art, culture, history, and identity.If you are interested in a specific, historical account of the Armenian genocide or a biography of Gorky, this is not necessarily the film for you, since each character and topic is filtered through the cinematic prism of Egoyan's more personal vision. However, if you're a fan of Egoyan's work, you will likely enjoy it immensely. Many of the fine actors that repeatedly appear in his film are present, giving performances that each fall somewhere between good and great. Those relatively new faces that appear also fit well into Egoyen's familiarly styled tapestry. While it is true that some scenes come across as somewhat emotionally and psychologically untrue, it is a very intentional part of the film.Many of the cornerstone's of Egoyan's work are active in Ararat with great force and exceptional detail. There's a deep Existentialist angst and keen awareness of the postmodern condition. The film is overloaded with symbolic and abstract meaning, at the direct expense of concrete, tangible truths. Emotion and history, accompanied by acrimony and taboos, permeates every aspect of duologue and character so that even inanimate objects fail to convey exact, firm meanings. Egoyan's knack for keeping his films superficially neat and stylish, despite tumultuous inner struggles and an often troubling cinematic picture is at its most compelling.If you're searching for a film with few questions, easy answers, a conventional story with even more conventional artistic devices, then this is not the film for you. However, if you're searching for a film that questions the very fundamental structure of society, history, and art, and one which provides infinitely more questions than it does solid answers, then this is a good film for you.

S. C. 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.

ebirinci 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.

dakota73060 I saw this movie in the summer of 2003, and it has remained one of my favorite movies of all time. No, the subject is not light, I cried several times during this film. It tore my guts out.The music, the acting were all wonderful. Atom Egoyan is an amazing filmmaker, and Ararat is another fine work to his credit.(For those of you trashing this film saying you "don't get it," perhaps historical dramas aren't your bag. If you don't know the story behind this film, no you won't understand it.) Someday I hope to travel to Armenia to show my daughters where their ancestors came from.