Ararat

1. Ararat Atom Egoyan

2. Outline • Atom Egoyan’s ‘Home-Coming’ • Ararat: General Introduction and Questions • Personal Histories: • Ani and Celia; • Raffi, Ani and Celia; • Raffi in his Quest for Knowledge • David and Ali • Public History • Ways of Presentation

3. Atom Egoyan & Ararat • “Home”-coming in two senses: • Making a “Canadian” film after the two international projects: Felicia’s Journey (shot in Britain and Ireland, 1999); Krapp’s Last Tape (Beckett on Film series) • More and more ‘personal’ and emotional, less cerebral. (The Sweethereafter 1997)

4. Atom Egoyan: Films with Armenian Connections • Next of Kin: A bored young Canadian, while receiving experimental "video therapy", discovers tapes of an Armenian family who are missing a son. The young man assumes the identity of the long-lost boy, and is readily adopted by this new "family". • Calendar: An Armenian-Canadian photographer gets estranged from his wife, who is closer to Armenian culture, during their trip to Armenia, and then, back in Toronto, he needs to find a way to face this sad memory.

5. Atom Egoyan: Films with Armenian Connections • The Adjuster: There are two sisters from Armenia who have to burn pictures of the past and forget about them. • The other films: • displacement in a city, dysfunction of family, rituals of remembering and survival, etc. • including Exotica.

6. Personal connections: Actors/Actresses • Charles Aznavour –an Armenian French singer/star; • Eric Bogosian – American writer/actor of Armenian origin: “Like Rouben, I a Armenian and I wanted to embrace that by being part of this project.” • The others: Bruce Greenwood (actor/Clarence Ussher), Arsinée Khanjian (Ani) , Elias Koteas (Ali/Jevdet Bey )

7. Ararat: General Introd. • Plotlines: 1. planned genocide in Van: characters: Missionary Ussher, the boy Gorky, the photographer and his son in the center; e.g. clip 2. Raffi – Celia – Ani triangle (2 fathers); e.g. clip 1. 3. David – Philip – Ali triangle; e.g. clip 4. Ani – Gorky – Sorayan (the actor and script writer) – Egoyan

8. Starting Questions • Egoyan: “Ararat is as much about Canada now as it is about the Armenian genocide.” Do you agree? Why? • There are two different kinds of ‘history’ in this film: personal history and national history. How do they influence or overlap with each other in each character? • Ani and Raffi, Ani and Celia, David and Philip, Ali and Raffi, Saroyan, Archile Gorky. • How is the film within the film different in style from the film, Ararat?

9. Personal Histories (1): Ani and Celia • Battle between Ani and Celia – • Celia wants to believe that her father does not commit suicide; • Ani uses the story of Gorky and his mother to assert the right of a mother; she does not feel responsible for helping Celia deal with her past; • Bottled up, Celia becomes disruptive and even destructive.

10. Personal Histories (1): Ani, Raffi, and Celia • Both children need to understand their fathers’ suicide, its purposes and meanings. Clip: 2

11. Personal Histories (2): Raffi confused • Different views of history: Ali’s and Sorayan’s

12. Personal Histories (2): Raffi confused

13. Personal Histories (2): Raffi confused  Assertion

14. Personal Histories (2): Raffi’s Quest • What does Raffi get in Turkey and near Ararat? • Raffi goes in searching and almost destroys himself by being implicated in drug-dealing. Clip: the final scenes 1, • Resolution: Belief and the mother’s saving/nourishing hands: 2.  Gorky • More later . . .

15. Personal Histories (3): Gorky • Cannot get over the past (witnessing the brutal killing of his friend, and Armenian women) clip: the “witness” account

16. Personal Histories (4): David, Philip, Ali • David tries to accept Philip and Ali, but he is deeply Christian. • Philip rejects David out of his sense of insecurity. • David tries to open up more by letting Raffi go (not performing his duty in catching him), having Philip in mind.

17. Personal Histories to Public History • Sorayan’s film: • 1. What do you think about the showing of all the killings and rape and heroism? • E.g. the women burned; the last scene with a woman raped; the photographer’s suicidal heroism; • 2. Some clips to think over: • Ani’s intrusion into the set; • The intersection of Raffi’s reading, interpretation and the eyewitness account; • Different Views

18. Atom Egoyan: “Ararat” the Film • I do not want to make those images ironic. I do, however, want to underline the limitations of that kind of representation.” • What are the limitations of repeating histories of sadness?

19. Atom Egoyan: Ararat • a "meditation on the spiritual role of art in the process of struggling for meaning and redemption in the aftermath of genocide.“(http://www.cdca.asso.fr/cdca/cdca-egoyan_article_theguardian.htm ). • “I wanted to more to examine the role and consequences of art making: how people make artifacts of their experience, and what those artifacts mean to them.” (McSorley)

20. Ararat: Opening and Conclusion • Opening– different forms of art fade into Toronto Airport • Remembering through human artifacts, which including forms of art and storytelling.

21. Ararat: Conclusion Closing – What Raffi shows to Celia: “I felt it”“His ghost.”

22. Ararat: Conclusion Closing – 2. The hands’ touching and working

23. Reference • Tom McSorley. “Far Away, So Close: Atom Egoyan Returns Home with Ararat.”Take One 2002 (Sept-Nov): 8-13.