Thursday, February 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: Ararat has good intentions, bad result

By Bob Grimm

Somebody should've given maverick director Atom Egoyan a little more money to make Ararat, because this one should've been a straight-up period piece. Instead, it's a confusing, often tedious film that alternates flashback accounts of 1915's genocide of the Armenians in Turkey with a modern-day filming of the subject as a feature. The film-within-a-film technique that Egoyan employs doesn't work, amounting to one of 2002's biggest cinematic messes.

Egoyan has specialized in films of quiet, haunting mystery such as Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. Here his goals are a bit lofty, and it is admirable that he wanted to tell this story. Whatever his intentions, the end result seems like a bad excuse for avoiding the huge costs of authentic period piece filmmaking.

Egoyan sets the majority of the story in the present, when a director is making a film about the Armenian slaughter. There are moments where those involved with the production are off the set, carrying on various character subplots. There are others where they are filming their movie, which provides some background of the Armenian atrocity. And finally, there are moments where the action actually flashes back to 1915. Egoyan can't keep the narrative from being utterly confusing and aggravating.

Worst of all is a subplot involving Rafi (David Alplay), a member of the film crew being held up at U.S. customs for suspicion of drug smuggling. Rafi takes it in part to describe world history to a Customs agent (Christopher Plummer), delivering some dreadful monologues, repeatedly banging home historical moments and facts.

The dialogue is terrible, and the parts of the film do not add up, resulting in what will hopefully be the last major mess of Egoyan's promising career. Ararat has mighty good intentions, but it is one bad movie.