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In a new film at Cannes, Charles Aznavour’s character eats the seeds of a
pomegranate — one a day — to remind him of his mother’s flight from Ottoman
Turkey, when the fruit was all she had to live on.
In real life, Aznavour’s parents fled Turkey for France to escape the
killings of Armenians during World War I. The 77-year-old singer-actor, whose
real name is Chahnour Varinag Aznavourian, has waited a lifetime for a
compelling movie about the history of his people.
“Ararat,” which opened in Cannes on Monday, is that movie, he says. The
film by Atom Egoyan, best known for “The Sweet Hereafter,” jumps between fact
and fiction, past and present.
Armenians claim that some 1.5 million people were killed in 1915 as part of a
campaign of genocide aimed at forcing the Armenian population from the east of
Turkey. Turkey says there was no systematic campaign of slaughter and that many
Armenians fled during the war and the civil unrest that followed.
The movie’s inclusion in Cannes has caused an outcry in Turkey, and several
groups have petitioned and threatened to boycott Miramax, which released the
film, and its parent company, the Walt Disney Co.
For Egoyan, a Canadian of Armenian origin, the movie was a labor of love. It
also had special meaning for many of its stars, including actors Eric Bogosian
and Arsinee Khanjian, who are of Armenian origin.
Few people outside the Armenian community know much about the killings, and
Egoyan hopes the movie will change that. One character in the film points out
that Adolf Hitler saw the slaughter as proof he could get away with the Final
Solution, because “nobody remembered the extermination of the Armenians.”
The movie leaps between 1915 Turkey and present-day Canada, and with a
complex web of characters whose ties are not apparent from the beginning.
Aznavour plays a director making a movie about the genocide. The film within
a film is the starting point for telling that story, and for showing how history
affects two Canadian families.
Most of the characters are struggling to come to terms with the loss of loved
ones and are looking to the past for answers.
Khanjian, Egoyan’s partner in life, plays Ani, an art historian who has lived
through the death of two husbands and is struggling in her relationship with her
teen-age son.
She has written a book about an early 20th century Armenian painter, Arshile
Gorky. In beautiful, emotional flashbacks, we see Gorky as he paints a portrait
of his mother, who died of starvation during forced marches.
Ani’s son, Raffi, is helping out on the movie set and goes to Turkey to film
the deserted, ruined villages and churches of his ancestors. David Alpay, a
tousle-haired 20-year-old Canadian pre-med student with no acting experience,
gives an impressive and soulful performance as Raffi.
Then there’s Christopher Plummer, who plays a customs agent at the airport
who intercepts Raffi on his way home from Turkey, suspicious that he might be
smuggling drugs.
Other characters include a Turkish-Canadian actor who struggles with his
conscience to play the role of an evil Turkish official; a pushy, fast-talking
screenwriter (Bogosian); and a deeply troubled teen-age girl who attacks a
museum painting with a knife.
If it sounds complicated, it is, and Egoyan said he knows that he’s
“expecting a ton of the viewer.” But the connections between the characters —
and between the past in Turkey and the present in Canada — pay off in the end.
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