how to make important history LOOK uninteresting

we all know it's wrong to compare human sufferring, because it has an absolute character and implies a normative authority which is not be granted to people. but you can compare the manner in which you bring suffering in discussion or you portray it.

i saw a film about genocide that i've been planning to see for a long time and it sucked immensely.

i saw a film about genocide which i found by accident on a library shelf and it really got to me.

i find it saddening that the calamity of the armenian community, namely the genocide in 1915-18 is still disputed as a truthful historical event. but works such as Atom Egoyan's Ararat do not help this ethical crisis but turn it into kitch. the story of the armenian's deportation and humiliation and mass murders is told by a confused and indoctrinated young guy smuggling drugs into canada (of which he had no knowledg) in front of a customs officer in his last day before retirement who ends up calling the guy's art historian mom who offered expertise for the making of a film about the genocide starring the homosexual partner of the son of the custom's officer. if you understood nothing, it's wonderful, because it is hard to digest in its gratuitous intricacy. i wonder if the canadian-armenian director wanted to convey the tradegy of his people by putting emphasis on the relationshit of the aforementioned narrator with his stepsister who keeps accusing the step mom (the valiant art historian, lecturing tirelessly about the life and work of artist Arshile Gorki, a survivor of the genocide) about murdering her father.

carbord bad scenography represents mount ararat in the distance, even if the film-in-the film takes place in van (armenian stronghold during the genocide) from where one cannot see the mountain- it's the observation of the learned art historian woman in the contemporary frame of "ararat". for me it symbolizes the whole effort behind this: very long expectations father laborious disappointments.

I'll postpone writing about the second one, which jerks tears out of stones and guilt out of everybody, because i'm too bitter right now. ararat won best film of the year in Canada and other awards, while the other one impressed only a few people at an independent filmmakers' festival in Indianapolis, Indiana.

to be continued...