Ararat - C+
Now Playing: (2002, Atom Egoyan) [seen on DVD]
Here's a film that could serve as an object demonstration of the difference between complicated and complex- whereas most of Egoyan's work has been complex, supplying details and information that serve to make the films more interesting, here he piles on too much extra stuff, making the film unncessarily cluttered and losing focus of any sort of point. The central germ of the movie is the Armenian massacre by the Turks in 1914-1915, which I'll grant you is (1) a great big tragedy and (2) sadly forgotten by history. So Egoyan, if this is such a important story to you, HOW ABOUT YOU TELL THAT FRICKIN' STORY???? But noooo... he's Atom Egoyan, and he can't just tell a story simply, can he? Never mind that most of the plot strands in this film are non-starters (particularly the business with the bitter step-sister) and others are clumsily handled (given the tightened security at airports nowadays would a customs officer have all day to attempt an inquisition on one person?). Why is it necessary that all of these people are connected when he's not going to give us one of these great moments of convergence he's pulled off so well in the past? And what of the scenes of the film being made? Sure, I liked how the actors tried to analyze their relationship to the characters they were playing, and the way the screenwriter aimed for dramatic effect while the historical consultant went to bat for history. But it's really frustrating to see a dude like Egoyan, with such a gift for nuance, use the fairly cheap effect of showing a historical scene onscreen only to pull the camera back to see the crew filming the movie. Once I could handle, but he did this several times, and since I was able to figure out early on that he wasn't going to show me anything that was meant to resemble actual re-enactments of the historical events, this is just rubbing my face in the post-modern-ness of it, in my opinion. This isn't exactly a bad movie, I guess, but this is Atom Egoyan we're talking about here. Maybe he was too close to this story to really tear into it, but I dunno. I know that if I had something to say I'd let the other stuff kinda fall by the wayside. But what do I know? I'm not Atom Egoyan.