MOVIE REVIEW `Ararat' Examines the Armenian Holocaust Home Edition

• Published in: The Los Angeles times
• Main Author: MICHAEL WILMINGTON Byline: MICHAEL WILMINGTON
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, Calif Los Angeles Times Communications LLC 25.05.1989
• ISSN: 0458-3035

Representatives of Turkey appear, too. Here, as with some of the scenes of the Armenian "Young Turks," the movie is at its most disturbing. Few histories cast any doubt on the Turkish army's wholesale massacre of the Armenian citizenry. Yet these representatives vehemently lecture young Turkish-Americans in workshops, or blandly address the camera, exuding an air of wounded reason, their eyes shifting or glazing over. "Back to Ararat" is well shot by [Holmquist] and his crew, and beautifully scored to the mournful tunes of Armenian composer Komitas, who never composed again after the massacre. It's difficult to watch it without a sense of outrage: not directed against the Turkish people, but against the brutal tyrants who ruled over them in 1915 and hatched the inhuman stratagem of emptying an entire land. And it's hard not to feel anguish, not just for for the million or more Armenians, but for every helpless group of people in the history of this world, whether Armenians, European Jews, Ukrainians, American Indians, Africans or Cambodians, crushed in the juggernaut of politics, enslaved or slaughtered by callous, cruel and vain leaders who believe themselves above the law and humanity.