17 replies to this topic

[wh00t]

It seems Ebert and Roeper, formerly Siskel and Ebert, arguably today's most popular film critics, are not going to review ARARAT on their nationally broadcast television show. This past weekend they chose to review two other films out in limited release (LA/NY): THE CRIME OF FATHER AMARO and STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN. They also reviewed a film coming out this coming Friday, THE QUIET AMERICAN. It should be noted that THE CRIME OF FATHER AMARO grossed about double what ARARAT did in its premiere weekend, but it was shown in 43 theaters as opposed to ARARAT's 6.

But more shockingly, STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN grossed half of what ARARAT did, despite being shown in 4 times as many theaters. What valid excuse do the critics have to not review an important Atom Egoyan (whose SWEET HEREAFTER made both Siskel and Ebert's top 10 of the year list) motion picture picture, one that has generated so much buzz, a film that opened the Toronto Film Festival? Surely it is more worthy of a review than THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN? I am convinced there is some foul play involved to keep ARARAT's subject matter from reaching a wider audience.

Nobody can force them to review a movie, but the circumstances demand explaining. I thought that perhaps they were waiting for it to go for a wider release before reviewing, and perhaps this is still the case, but seeing as how they reviewed 2 other limited release movies this week, I'm not so sure. I encourage you all to contact Buena Vista Entertainment as well as ANCA, AAA, and any other organizations who could look into the matter.

[ November 19, 2002, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: wh00t ]

[Sip]

I don't blame them if they don't want to review it. No matter which side they vote on, they will probably end up getting several serious death threats.

[wh00t]

Hmmm, Sip I'm not sure death threats are the issue. I don't think the critics are fearing for their lives.. if giving ARARAT a bad review had consequences like that, half our critics would be dead by now!

But seriously though, the whole ordeal annoys me greatly. Under normal circumstances, ie. if the movie did not deal with the Armenian question, a new $11-million Egoyan picture would definitely be reviewed. Am I blowing it out of proportion? You decide..

[Sip]

I don't know if you are blowing it out of proportion! My "feeling" is that in their eyes, this movie is probably not that important ... but that's just my feeling. Obviously Armenians and Turks have a much much different view on the topic.

[wh00t]

Sip, I understand what you are saying, and in normal circumstances I would agree. I would say hey, ARARAT isn't a big-time motion picture that appeals to the masses, so why would they review it on a nationally broadcast show to people who will never see it?

My problem lies in the fact that apparently they do review less "important" movies on a regular basis. This weekend, when ARARAT, IMO should have been reviewed, they chose 1 movie which is on all accounts less "important" than ARARAT (the Motown flick) and one perhaps equally "important" (The Crime of.. which was a hit in Mexico). When an unknown Motown documentary gets chosen in favor of an important work of a world-renowned film director...

[Boghos]

I think that there could be several reasons why the movie was not reviewed, but I agree that Egoyan has already found its place in cinema and that any of his movies, historical or not, will always be discussed in the relevant circles.

On the other hand Ararat is in my view not the movie that most Armenians were hoping for. But knowing Egoyan one could not really have hoped for that. We had a screening of the film here, a special session during the São Paulo Film Festival (organized by an Armenian, by the way) as Martin has also reported, most people did not understand it or were disappointed by its message(s).

I think Nairi was the one that mentioned if Egoyan doesn´t make it, someone else will. That is probably true. But I do not believe that the dynamics of AG recognition and surrounding issues would be in any way altered even if Spielberg were to come out with a movie on the topic. I think that if we continue to wait or expect whomever but the ROA to deal with this issue in any coherent manner, we will be always disapppointed.

[MJ]

I think that one of the reasons of the absence of the review on the film may be that even the most sophisticated eye may need to see it at least twice to understand the entire message and structure of the film. Additionally, I think non-Armenians cannot really understand it, since one has to have lived the entire drama and grown up with it to understand its rationale.

A couple of other observations:

There are two gigantic Armenian symbols in the center of the film: Arshil Gorky and Charles Aznavour – one as a central personage and the other as a central actor. The role of Aznavour is not gigantic on its own. Perhaps a lot more modest actor could have successfully plaid it. Besides, one may ask "why would Aznavour agree to play such a derivative role?" I think the answer is simple and is in the understanding of Saroian’s/Aznovour’s message - "It doesn’t matter [what they say, what the do, what they recognize, what they don't recognize, what are the details, what word we would use to characterize it, etc." This message had to be delivered by someone of his statue to be accepted even if one disagrees with it – of coarse assuming it would be understood.

On the other hand, I think the other central message, for which Gorky was the axis of this film, was, "This is what matters – we live so that to be something good, to do something good, we can make something out of our lives and nation other than becoming perennial victims and whiners. Life is noble."

For me, personally, the value of this film is the discovery of the depth of Egoyan's and Aznavour's understanding of the Armenian Cause – it is something internal. It wouldn’t be of interest to Siskel and Ebert nor they can assess it. This is very Armenian.

[Rubo]

First Martin you are disappointed that they have not reviewed the film and then you write this below.

“For me, personally, the value of this film is the discovery of the depth of Egoyan's and Aznavour's understanding of the Armenian Cause – it is something internal. It wouldn’t be of interest to Siskel and Ebert nor they can assess it. This is very Armenian.”

Essentially justifying it their luck of interest in the film because “it is something internal”? “This is very Armenian.”

Why is it the holocaust or any other Jewish related issues are not strictly Jewish internal issue but they made them wide mainstream American and international issue. Would it be a stretch of a imagination to speculate that some Jewish lobby with strong Turkish ties simply put a stop to Ararat’s potentiality?Why Jewish lobbies?you figure it yourselves.

[Rubo]

It looks like the film is doing well despite of some film critics lock of attention.

From Groong

'Ararat' Opens With the Largest Per Screen Average of Any Film This Week
From: BenSul@aol.com
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 01:46:33 -0800

'Ararat' Opens With the Largest Per Screen Average of Any Film This Week

Film Averages $32,188 Per Screen in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto

NEW YORK, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Miramax Films is proud to
announce that "Ararat," a Robert Lantos production written and
directed by Atom Egoyan, which was released in Los Angeles,
New York, and Toronto on Friday, November 15, had a very strong
opening weekend and averaged $35,188 per screen, the largest
of any film this weekend. In the first three days, "Ararat"
brought in $211,130 on six screens in North America.

"These numbers exceed my wildest expectations," said Egoyan.
"Miramax and Alliance have done an extraordinary job of combining
grass roots marketing with a more traditional campaign."

"These initial numbers are the first real vindication for our
efforts to bring this untold chapter of history to the screen,"
said producer Robert Lantos. "The amazing response at the box
office corroborates my conviction that there definitely is a
commercial audience for a thought provoking film with substance."

"Ararat," which has been warmly embraced by the North American
Armenian community, premiered in Los Angeles last week as the
American Film Institute's "Centerpiece." The film was also the
subject of a cocktail reception and screening at the Library of
Congress, hosted by the Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues,
Co-chairs Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Representative Joe
Knollenberg, and Honorary Host Senator Robert Dole.

"Ararat" is Atom Egoyan's most provocative film to date. It
is a story about truth and denial -- on both an intimate and a
grand scale. The estranged members of a contemporary Armenian
family are faced both with Turkey's denial of their catastrophic
past and with their own complicated present. Told in Egoyan's
trademark elliptical style, "Ararat" is at once a mysterious
and powerful story about determining truth.

"Ararat" is an Alliance Atlantis and Serendipity Point Films
presentation of an Atom Egoyan film in association with Ego Film
Arts and ARP. "Ararat" is produced by Robert Lantos and Egoyan.

[MJ]

Just came across the following Opening presentation:
____________________________________
Never Again

"My original impulse was to tell a straightforward historical story," says The Sweet Hereafter’s Egoyan, whose new film Ararat tells the story of the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which well over a million people – two thirds of the Armenia’s population – where murdered by the Turks. "But I’d have to show extreme scenes of unspeakable horror, and as a filmmaker, I can’t do that without a degree of self-consciousness. In the end, I want the film to be about the story parents tell their children, how small moments of misunderstanding huge generational rifts." Ararat, set in the present day, tells the stry through an Armenian family working with the film crew to make a picture about the war, and is the Oscar-nominated director’s most personal film: Much of Egoyan’s family was lost in the massacre, and his son is names after one of the picture’s true-life protagonists, painter Arshile Gorky. "You want people to know what happened, but also what continues to happen," Egoyan says, stressing how many Turks still deny that the war took place. "When I told my son about the genocide, he asked if the Turks said they were sorry. If you tell him the truth, the trauma gets passed on. I want to create a fantasy of how that cycle might be broken – the healing that may occur when someone invests themselves in someone else’s history in an emotional, responsible way."

New York Magazine
November 18

[MJ]

Just came across the following Opening presentation:
____________________________________
Never Again

"My original impulse was to tell a straightforward historical story," says The Sweet Hereafter’s Egoyan, whose new film Ararat tells the story of the Armenian genocide of 1915, in which well over a million people – two thirds of the Armenia’s population – where murdered by the Turks. "But I’d have to show extreme scenes of unspeakable horror, and as a filmmaker, I can’t do that without a degree of self-consciousness. In the end, I want the film to be about the story parents tell their children, how small moments of misunderstanding huge generational rifts." Ararat, set in the present day, tells the stry through an Armenian family working with the film crew to make a picture about the war, and is the Oscar-nominated director’s most personal film: Much of Egoyan’s family was lost in the massacre, and his son is names after one of the picture’s true-life protagonists, painter Arshile Gorky. "You want people to know what happened, but also what continues to happen," Egoyan says, stressing how many Turks still deny that the war took place. "When I told my son about the genocide, he asked if the Turks said they were sorry. If you tell him the truth, the trauma gets passed on. I want to create a fantasy of how that cycle might be broken – the healing that may occur when someone invests themselves in someone else’s history in an emotional, responsible way."

New York Magazine
November 18

[MJ]

Meant to be, ""...I want the film to be about the story parents tell their children, how small moments of misunderstanding create huge generational rifts."

[nairi]

Why post a secondary source when there is a primary one?

Nairi

******************************
WHY THIS FILM? by Atom Egoyan

egofilmarts.com
11/17/2002

At the press conference for The Sweet Hereafter at Cannes in
1997, a journalist asked me if the film couldn't be seen as a
metaphor for the Armenian Genocide. It was one of the few times
in my life when I found myself quite speechless. The journalist
went on to suggest that many of my films had dealt with themes
of denial and its consequences, and was interested as to why I
hadn't dealt with the subject more directly.

It was a good question.

I should begin with some personal facts. My grandparents
from my father's side were victims of the horrors that befell
the Armenian population of Turkey in the years around 1915.
My grandfather, whose entire family save his sister was wiped
out in the massacres, married my grandmother who was the sole
survivor of her family. I never knew either of these people.
They had both died long before I was born.

When my parents moved to Canada, they settled in Victoria - a city
on the west coast where we were the only Armenian family. Though
Armenian was my mother tongue, I was desperate to assimilate.
Although I sometimes heard stories of what the Turks had done to
my grandparents, I certainly wasn't raised with anger or hatred.
I was too concerned with trying to be like all the other kids
to dwell on these ancient grievances.

I left home at eighteen to study classical guitar and
international relations in Toronto. At the university, there
was an active Armenian Students' Association, and I was exposed
to an Armenian community for the first time. It's important to
understand this was an extremely crucial moment in the evolution
of Armenian politics. Armenian terrorists (or 'freedom fighters',
depending on your point of view) were beginning their systematic
attacks against Turkish figures. Many Turkish ambassadors and
consuls were being assassinated in this period, as Armenians
extremists were enraged by the continued Turkish denial of what
their grandparents had suffered.

I was completely torn by these events. While one side of me could
understand the rage that informed these acts, I was also appalled
by the cold-blooded nature of these killings. I was fascinated
by what it would take for a person who was raised and educated
with North American values of tolerance to get involved with
these acts. One of the first feature scripts I ever wrote dealt
with this issue.

Thankfully, I never made that film. At that point, twenty years
ago, I wasn't ready to deal with the 'Armenian Issue'.

The problem with any film that deals with the 'Armenian Issue',
is that there are so many issues to deal with. First of all,
there's the historical event. Since no widely-released dramatic
movie had ever presented the genocide, it was important that
any film project would need to show what happened. We live in a
popular culture that demands images before we allow ourselves to
believe, and it would be unimaginable to deal with this history
without presenting what the event looked like.

I believe that the most dramatic aspect of this history, however,
is not the way it happened, but how it's been denied. Since
the end of World War I, Turkey has refused to acknowledge the
Genocide, going so far as to claim that it was in fact Armenians
who committed genocide against the Turks. While this may seem
preposterous, it is important to remember that there is now a
generation of Turks who have been raised with this denial. They
aren't denying anymore. It's what they've been led to believe.

From the moment I began to write this script, I was drawn to
the idea of what it means to tell a story of horror. In this
case, the horror isn't only about the historical events that
took place in Turkey over eighty-five years ago, but also the
enduring horror of living with something so cataclysmic that has
been systematically denied. Without getting into the mechanics
of that denial (there are a number of books and articles on that
issue), it is important to note that the role of the director
in my film-within-the-film is monumental. Edward Saroyan, and
his screenwriter Rouben, are faced with an awesome task. They
will be the first filmmakers to present these images to a wide
public. If their film seems raw and blunt in its depictions, it's
because they are the first people to cinematically present these
'unspeakable horrors'. They are desperate to get the point across.

We learn that Edward's mother was a survivor of the genocide -
that he is making this film to honour her spirit. Needless to say,
such noble personal intentions do not necessarily lend themselves
to critical distance, and it's clear from the glimpses we see of
Edward's movie that it might sometimes veer into an exaggerated
and extreme view of history. Like many epics, it paints its heroes
and its villains in an 'over-the-top' way in order to heighten
the sense of drama. Edward's ARARAT is a sincere attempt to show
what happened, told from the point of view of a boy who was raised
with these images by his mother - a genocide survivor. The scenes
of the film-within-the-film represent the way many survivors and
children who were told of these horrors would recall these events.

I decided to create this film-within-the-film in order to generate
the drama in the present day. All of the central characters in
my ARARAT are somehow connected to the making of Edward's ARARAT,
and most of the conflicts that occur in the contemporary story
are related to the unresolved nature of not only the genocide, but
also the difficulties and compromises faced by the representation
of this atrocity. How does an artist speak the unspeakable?
What does it mean to listen? What happens when it is denied?

These are hugely complicated issues, and I certainly have enormous
expectations of my viewer. While my work may have been different
if a more popular movie version of the Armenian Genocide had
already existed, this was not the case. Thus the screenplay had
to tell the story of what happened, why it happened, why it's
denied, why it continues to happen, and what happens when you
continue to deny. ARARAT is a story about the transmission of
trauma. It is cross-cultural and inter-generational. The grammar
of the screenplay uses every possible tense available, from the
past, present and future, to the subjective and the conditional. I
firmly believe that this was the only way the story could be told.
It is dense and complicated because the issues are so complex.

History is not only the responsibility of the person who speaks
the truth. It needs someone to listen. When that person listens,
how they listen, why they listen, are all essential components of
the communication of experience. While the structure of ARARAT
is densely layered with these issues, I needed to show how the
collective human linkage of action and responsibility is both
the wonder and tragedy of our condition.

I couldn't have made this film any other way.

Atom Egoyan

[nairi]

I was kidding about the above btw. It was an interesting article MJ. Thanks.

Yup. And I also believe that one way to counter these movies is simply by silencing their existence.

Nairi

[ November 20, 2002, 05:16 PM: Message edited by: nairi ]

[wh00t]

Well, Ebert saw it, didn't like it, and posted a needless half-truth about the "enormous controversy" surrounding the Hitler quote.

http://www.suntimes....ararat27f1.html

"Note: In the film, Adolf Hitler is quoted discussing his plans for genocide and asking, "Who remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" The film presents this as fact, although there is enormous controversy over whether Hitler actually ever said it."