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Ararat
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 25 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 39 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Atom Egoyan
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 15, 2002
DVD: July 22, 2003
Running Time: 116 minutes, Color
Origin: Canada / France
Summary
RATING: R for violence, sexuality/nudity and language
Starring David Alpay, Arsinée Khanjian, Charles Aznavour, Christopher Plummer, Eric Bogosian, Brent Carver, Bruce Greenwood, and Elias Koteas
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. (Miramax)
Also On Metacritic
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Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
As ever, Egoyan assembles a devoted repertory cast, including Christopher Plummer.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
Ararat is less about history than the necessity of dialogue and debate, and the devastating effects of stifling dialogue.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Expresses with uncommon power the highly relevant issue of public indifference to genocide, which is especially well dramatized by a scene with Elias Koteas as an actor playing a Turk.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
Until its final moments this almost great movie feels as if it's racing against itself in a neck-and-neck battle between its troubled heart and its egg-shaped head. The heart wins by a nose.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
This is a heartfelt piece, and while passion alone can't carry a movie, it sure helps. Ararat is uneven because Egoyan couldn't tell it smoothly.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
This toweringly ambitious picture confronts a brilliant director, Atom Egoyan, with a major historical event and a profound theme.
Read Full Review >Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf
The resulting project matters much and should be seen, but how much it'll be FELT depends on your specific level of patience for a director who presumes audience comprehension to be at about a fourth-grade level (at least he's a shoo-in for Hollywood).
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Egoyan's oblique, layered attack ultimately pays off, evoking a strong emotional connection between past and present, the historical and the personal, in a flowing, cinematic manner in collaboration with his frequent cameraman, Paul Sarossy. The film makes use of an intoxicating array of Armenian music.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
We only experience the horror of the genocide through several layers of artifice -- first Saroyan's, then Egoyan's own -- a sad acknowledgement that with each story told, we're drawn that much further from the truth.
Read Full Review >Film Threat David Grove
Ararat isn't a great film because it's too convoluted and personal at times, but it's a showcase of technical mastery; the way Egoyan interweaves the stories of the historical recreation, the relationship between the son and his stepsister and the mystery of the art historian's dead husbands, is endlessly compelling.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
The screenplay's intelligence begins to break down in Egoyan's formal choices. Ideas never elude Egoyan, but boy does Saroyan's epic look uncertain and cruddy.
Read Full Review >New York Post Jonathan Foreman
Egoyan treats the Armenian genocide and its aftermath as a metaphor for cruelty and denial -- an exercise in either pretension or timidity that exploits this tragedy.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Perhaps this movie was so close to Egoyan's heart that he was never able to stand back and get a good perspective on it -- that he is as conflicted as his characters, and as confused in the face of shifting points of view.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Whatever the reason, the characters often seem only half-formed and there's a strange artificiality about the entire endeavor. Egoyan has never been a realist, and his style has contributed to his ability to deliver a knockout punch. Here, that punch is missing.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Egoyan's pedantic, lecturing approach makes the film a bit of a slog, although the basic material has an intrinsic interest that makes one at least want to know more about the historical events.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Doesn't connect with its audience in the one place that matters most: the heart.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Though typically engaging, Ararat occasionally suffers from what's previously been a virtue in Egoyan's filmmaking. His distancing techniques, rather than sharpening his ability to deal with a subject that lends itself to high emotion -- sometimes just seem distancing.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Jon Strickland
Egoyan has always constructed dense ensemble films, and here again the writer-director hopes to reinforce his themes by piling layer upon layer of character. Unfortunately, the layers end up cluttering the story.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
An impressive work in many regards -- the acting, the photography, the pace -- but it would've been even more so had Egoyan gone with his gut and been less indulgent of his brain.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Egoyan is one of Canada's most ambitious and original filmmakers, but the power of this intricate drama falls short of its aspirations, despite his personal investment in the subject, since he is of Armenian ancestry himself.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Dennis Lim
If the movie feels cumbersome and overstuffed, it's because Egoyan's characters, so often aphasic, are this time driven by a compulsion to speak -- though the noisy tumble of words mostly underscores their failure to communicate.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
Only two hours long but it may take your mind another day to get through it. Egoyan has stuffed a lot into this personal and strenuously opaque film, which perhaps explains why its over-plotted, elliptical structure seems so onerous.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker Anthony Lane
If I were a Turkish official, I would not be too worried by this picture. Nothing so slippery can stir up indignation. [18 November 2002, p. 104]
The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
All in the cast are competent, and some of the slaughter scenes make us ache, but the overlaid material does not enrich, it impedes.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 39 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Gregory T. gave it a6:
The story should be told, just as the Jewish retell their historical plight. Egoyan weaves good story lines well but does a less than artistically present the horrors the Armeinians endured. A simple scene with Kurds and Turks performing all the documented haneous acts is less compelling than a story line devoted to the perpetualness of these acts.
Anichka V. gave it a10:
Yes, we must remember the past and doesn't matter how sad and devastating it kwas. the Armenians had this loss and let the world know about it.
Heghine K. gave it a 10:
This movie is not just a movie, It tells the true dramatic story of Armenians_the Genocide of 1915. The world knows that...
Craig B. gave it an 8:
As a person who is neither Armenian nor Turkish, I am really just evaluating the film based on its entertainment value and, in that respect, I think this film is hugely successful. There is a great deal of emotional truth in every film that I have seen by Atom Egoyan, and that is especially true in this film where he has an obvious connection. Politically, the film opened my eyes to certain historical events of which I had previously not been aware. Maybe someday the Turks will produce a film maker of talent comparable to Egoyan, and maybe someday that person will create a film that tells the other side of the story in a manner that would be as interesting to watch as this film was. Until then, we have this very compelling version of the Armenian take on history.
David K. gave it a 3:
C'est un film indigne de M. Egoyan. Je suis vraiment decu. Le cote artistique est masquee par le souci de faire la propagande. Les faits qu'on nous presente comme des faits historiques sont manipules par souci de creer un opinion publique. Dommage...
Mounia C. gave it a 2:
A horrible propoganda which is made to hurt the feelings of the turkish nation by showing tham as horrible monsters. The historical truths are completely ignored. Ottoman army is shown as invaders in their own land and a rebellion movementin an empire is presented as an invasion. The violance scenes are pumping hatred against a nation which soon overthroned the ottoman empire. Humiliating...
Daniel F. gave it a 0:
It is a propoganda movie twisting historical facts and an atomic bomb against the dialogue between the turkish and armenian nations. An anti-turkish scandal... On top of all, A diplomat killer terorist is presented a hero. An insult against both nations.
