Egoyan's Much Anticipated Film Makes It's Debut

July Issue 2002 - By Nouritza Matossian

Notable filmmakers have tried to bring the Armenian Genocide story to a mainstream movie audience. Rouben Mamoulian could have. Henri Verneuil tried. Elia Kazan was denied.

This year, at the Cannes Film Festival, the world's most prestigious gathering of screen entertainers and industry notables, Canadian writer/director Atom Egoyan has achieved what others could not. For almost a century Armenians have been waiting for a film that would raze their ghosts and pay homage to 1.5 million dead. Egoyan's Ararat has taken up that toughest of challenges (against political resistance and threat of lawsuits).

With the help of a staunch ally, producer Robert Lantos and a cast that includes French-Armenian legend Charles Aznavour and Canadian-Armenian actress Arsinee Khanjian, Egoyan's $17.5 million film promises to follow in the tradition of other work that has earned him critical acclaim and two Academy Award nominations (in 1998 for The Sweet Hereafter).

As the 55th Cannes festival opened, the name Ararat was being spread with eager anticipation in conversations that also included news of Egoyan's refusal to enter his film in Cannes competition. Before the festival opened, Egoyan explained that he wasn't looking for awards for his film, but only wanted to tell its story. He said: "Having sat on juries myself I know that there are enough pressures without adding the political pressure which is on this film."

After so much debate, speculation and expectation, the film itself finally reached the Cannes audience on May 20 - first at an early-morning press screening, then in the evening when it made its debut to those lucky enough to be invited.

At 11 am, during an occasionally tense press conference, Aznavour, Egoyan, Lantos, Khanjian, and co-stars Simon Abkarian, Elias Koteas, David Alpay and others, batted political questions smoothly. All the artists stressed the seriousness with which they undertook the script. They all underlined that the Armenian Genocide has a universal dimension applying to others. Aznavour remarked urbanely: "I am 100 per cent French and 100 per cent Armenian. " adding, "You mustn't show hate on either side. I admire the Turkish people."

A juror from the Istanbul Film Festival panel suggested that the Armenian Diaspora was indifferent to this movie, which would not foster good relations between Armenia and Turkey. However he would persuade his fellow jurors to include it with certain provisos.

During the conference, Lantos, former CEO of Alliance (now Alliance Atlantis), Canada's largest production distribution company and presently owner of Serendipity, was asked if Ararat were only a film for Armenians. Lantos replied that the film would be distributed worldwide.

"I persuaded Atom to make this film because Atom was the only person who could make it as the greatest living Armenian director with the passion and craft equal to it," Lantos said.

By early afternoon, around the legendary red carpet steps outside the Palais, fans and photographers rammed against fences as starlets in wisps of see-through fabric minced up the stairs, and celebrities and movie heavyweights flashed coveted blue tickets. A group of youngsters played Armenian music and waved Armenian flags.

Egoyan, Aznavour, Khanjian, Koteas, Marie-Josée Croze and Simon Abkarian, wrapped their arms around each others' shoulders and went up the red carpet and into the theatre as a team. Inside, the anticipated first glimpse of Ararat opened with a shot of the portrait, The Artist and His Mother and the artist Arshile Gorky (Simon Abkarian) seen from the back, to the music of Groung. This ascendant image of the artist painting his dead mother contains the many branches of the plots like a matrix.

A veteran Armenian film director Edward Saroyan played with terse poignancy by Aznavour arrives in Canada but is refused entry by a customs officer (Christopher Plummer) unless he throws away the pomegranate he has brought with him to bring him luck. It reminds him of his mother who survived massacre by eating one seed a day and just as he is to make a film about the 1915 Siege of Van. He hears art historian Ani (Khanjian), reading from her book on Arshile Gorky, and decides to weave the boy Gorky's story into his production. Rouben, his producer (Eric Bogosian) engages Ani as movie consultant. Ani's son Raffi (David Aplay), is erotically involved with his stepsister, Celia, (Marie-Josée Croze), to his mother's dismay. He goes on a journey to film Mount Ararat.

The customs officer now suspicious of the contents of Raffi's sealed film canisters is held at bay as the boy passionately narrates his journey to the Armenian sites in present day Turkey and the Armenian Genocide. The officer's son Philip (Brent Carver) lives with Ali, his Turkish homosexual lover (Elias Koteas). It is a complex story with a threefold time frame. But at the very heart is the set of Van with a somewhat old-fashioned epic being shot about the heroic siege and centred on the missionary doctor Reverend Ussher (Bruce Greenwood) battling to save the lives of Armenians as they are raped, hacked and burned to death by Jevdet Bey and his troops. Many actors play two roles - Koteas'second role is as Jevdet Bey in the Van story.

Like a perplexing puzzle the parts slide elliptically. One word or double-entendre leads to a flashback or forward to one of the subplots. Like a perplexing puzzle the parts slide elliptically. Are we supposed to compare Ani and her son with Gorky and his longing for his dead mother? Saroyan's homage to his Armenian mother involves a rather ham historical movie in which he sets up battle scenes between Turkish soldiers and Armenian freedom fighters, even shifting Ararat to the edge of Lake Van. Is there a symmetry between this dutiful son and Gorky spending years on his double portrait with the mother's hands unfinished?

Now cut to the end of the film. Applause, more applause. A tough audience of seasoned film-makers, technicians, VIPs, actors, actresses, leap to their feet to give a standing ovation.

A long embrace for Atom from his mother. Khanjian, who is also Egoyan's wife, clung to Aznavour, her make up washed by floods of tears. The actors dazed staring in disbelief. Abkarian standing tall and proud, dark eyes flashing, a smile from ear to ear that embraced the whole theatre.

The reaction from Turkey has been shrill. One Turkish critic called it "not worthy of Egoyan.". Turkey's Minister of Culture, Istemihan Talay, disparaged it as an "aggressive" film and as "propaganda" which distorted history. Civic groups have threatened to boycott Miramax, the film's distributor, and Walt Disney Co., which produced the film.'

Miramax Chairman Harvey Weinstein riposted. "They're denying history. To me, the denial of the Armenian holocaust reminded me of the denial of our own Jewish Holocaust. I feel strongly about that."
Throughout the film, viewers are invited to question and look behind each image. The structure itself is a series of loops or as Henri Behar said 'peeling an onion'. It will make many weep with rage.
An obsession with reconstructing a fragmented identity through a work of art (as Gorky did), is a theme of Ararat.

"As long as Raffi is telling his story he can maintain his innocence to the customs officer and in the telling empowers himself," Egoyan said. "Two strangers meet in a darkened room and tacitly acknowledge their own history and attempt to make that transfiguration."

The director could also be talking about his own ambition in bringing audiences, Armenian, Turkish or other into the dark auditorium to watch "an image which is a construct of someone else's imagination. And I ask the viewer to assess what that means and then examine the evidence for themselves."

Nouritza Matossian is author of biography Black Angel, The Life of Arshile Gorky (Overlook Press), part-optioned as the book written by Ani in the film Ararat. www.arshile-gorky.com