ARARAT Explained

Ararat Explained

In a 20 January 2004 New York Times article on whether Ararat will be shown in Turkey, Stephen Kinzer reproduces this paragraph from film critic Roger Ebert’s review of Atom Egoyan’s film:

“Ararat” clearly comes from Egoyan’s heart, and it conveys a message he urgently wants to be heard: that the world should acknowledge and be shamed that a great crime was committed against his people. The message I receive from the movie, however, is a different one: that it is difficult to know the truth of historical events, and that all reports depend on the point of view of the witness and the state of mind of those who listen to the witness.

Is Ebert right about Atom Egoyan’s intentions? Did Egoyan try and fail to make a propaganda film about the Armenian Genocide? Ararat’s film within a film clearly mocks propaganda films like Schindler’s List, with their period costumes and righteous outsider heroes (Ussher, Schindler).

So what then was Egoyan hoping to get across?

Stefan Kristensen, a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Geneva, offers an in-depth reading of Ararat in the current issue of Armenian Forum (vol. 3, no. 2). The article is titled, “Memory and the Representation of Genocidal Violence.”

A scene from Atom Egoyan’s Ararat, discussed in depth in Armenian Forum, vol. 3, no. 2. Here Celia (Marie-Josée Croze) stabs Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother, while Philip the museum guard (Brent Carver) restrains her.

According to Kristensen, Egoyan’s “fundamental thesis is that the memory of violence is itself a source of violence, . . . and that the only way of breaking through this cycle is creativity.” It is the creative process, according to Kristensen, that helps people make sense of reality and accept it.

The case of Saroyan, the director of the film within the film (played by Charles Aznavour), shows, however, “that it is not enough to be an artist or to be creative in order to break the circle of violence.”

Kristensen devotes sections of his essay to interpreting each of the major characters in the film: “Celia, or Vengeance”; “Ali as the Carrier of Denial”; “Raffi as Victim and Victor of Denial”; “Saroyan: Reconstitution of Violence Makes Violence Fictional”; and “Ani: Artwork as Fetish.”

Click here to get a copy of the issue of Armenian Forum in which Kristensen's essay appears.