Highly Overrated But Still Good

Expected more

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

In spite of a lukewarm critical response, the fact that Ararat won Best Motion Picture at the Genie Awards and that it would be a definite personal film to Atom Egoyan sounds promising. He viewed his better films The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Remember (2015) as having allusions to the Armenian Genocide, which impacted his family; Ararat is meant to deal with the often neglected subject head-on, or so you'd think. Rather, it deals with a crew in Toronto that makes a film about the genocide. Seeing snippets of their work, I wish Egoyan had made some version of that instead.I rarely use this criticism of film, but Ararat is excessively preachy, much of it coming from David Alpay and Bruce Greenwood, who spout out facts at length, often without a lot of emotion, and often to people who wouldn't be much interested. A lot of this is entirely irrelevant a customs official like Plummer's character, no matter how the film attempts to spin this. When Alpay's character quotes Hitler about no one remembering the Armenians, Elias Koteas' character, who'd earlier questioned if the account went exactly as it is said to, and who notes this matter is behind him and his colleagues born in Canada, echoes the Nazi dictator's sentiment in a deeply sinister voice. He has gone from mild skepticism to all-out Hitler, in Egoyan's shameless breach of Godwin's law.Much of this smacks as false. When Greenwood's character, an actor, is advised to read a book that inspired the film, the character replies he has read the book, along with every single thing ever written about the artist it's about, the Armenian Genocide, and the Armenian people in general, and the character isn't even said to be Armenian. Is this the kind of in-depth expertise Egoyan finds in his actors on a regular basis? Do actors who've read every book ever written about the broadest of subjects frequently line up at his auditions, and he gets his pick? I'm sure every other director envies him.Films about films are too common. Occasionally, you get a really great one that makes it okay, such as Sunset Blvd. Most of the time, it's just narcissistic, and in this case, it definitely gets in the way of the awareness Egoyan was hoping to create.

I came across the movie Ararat while doing research for a paper I was writing for school. I watched it hoping that it would give me further insight into the Armenian Genocide. I can honestly say that this movie not only enforced the research I had done, but also led me to new topics I had not yet researched myself. I strongly believe in knowing about the events in a movie before watching it. Otherwise, you can sit through an entire film and not understand the meaning or significance that it holds. For instance, if you watch a film on Gallipolli (a very important battle for the Australians in the First World War) you may not know what it means for the people who were involved (like most people who live outside of Australia). However, if you take time to do a little research before hand you can easily watch a film about it and understand its importance. That said, I believe that this applies to Ararat in the same way. If you don't take the time to research the Armenian Genocide along with other aspects of the film such as the Van Resistance, Arshile Gorky, Clarence Ussher or even Aghtamar Island, you can never fully understand this movie (or any other film about the Armenian Genocide as well). I thought this movie was the perfect mix of storyline and documentation. In my opinion, it presented the facts of the Armenian Genocide accurately and effectively, without turning into a documentary about it. It showed how it still affects the Armenians of today, even though it happened a little bit less than one hundred years ago. How there could still be such denial and hatred between the people who were involved. The fact that we know so much about the holocaust that Adolf Hitler carried out and so little about this Holocaust, that started only 18 years before Hitler came to power, is shocking and deeply upsetting. I recommend this film highly, as not only an important piece on this historical event, but also an excellent film. I must applaud Atom Egoyan for doing this event justice and bringing it to life on the screen.

As the president of Turkey announced to the world 1 year ago, Turkish government is opened all of the Ottoman's archive they have which is millions of documents for all history researches about world war 1 and sending all Armenian to the place that they can live peacefully. But neither the Armenian government is seem to use this opportunity nor they didn't even consider it as an option.Moreover they are still not opening their archives they are just blaming with not giving reason Because they know that its not a genocide its just what they use to get elected in their country and targeting a big enemy so that they can be united.Turkey doesn't have millions of dollars to spend on this issue there are no movies about so this called genocide that made in Turkey. What we do make special effects and editing in those armenian genocide and Ararat movies because in Armenia they don't have that technology we help them to express theirselves. Because we are indulgent to every opinion and we respect them but we cant except thing that didn't happened.

I don't have a dog in the historic fight here, but expected to learn something I didn't know from the film. As a history buff, I had high hopes of insight into the historic context of the time, the actions taken by the two sides, how they viewed the situation, and/or why they did what they did.Instead, the opportunity was squandered on a long, drawn out, absolutely boring melodrama involving some obscure family conflict, a gratuitous if titillating sex scene, some bizarre injection of homosexuality and atheism creating stress in an aging character with nothing at all to do with the history, and a lot of drippy and pointless personal drama. The only history to be seen consisted of one dimensional Turks and Armenians shooting each other, especially the former shooting and raping civilians of the latter.The actual historical actors were like cartoon characters. One might, for example, have liked to know that the American doctor was doing in the middle of Turkey. Or why the Turk commander felt he needed to do what he did. Instead, the historic conflict is treated with all the depth of a Road Runner cartoon, while the main focus is on some kid and his girlfriend going through an emotional life crisis. Either, done well, might have been interesting. Both mashed together and done poorly are like a cherry pie with asparagus filling. Boring, unenlightening, and patched together, it was as if someone had taken some cheap footage of war from a century ago and randomly spliced in parts of various soap operas. What a waste of an opportunity.This movie just sucked. I don't usually express my opinion that way, but frankly it just sucked. I can understand why either side with a political axe to grind might feel compelled to love or hate the film, but having none I found it almost unwatchably boring.