Ararat By Atom Egoy Movie Analysis

In the movie Ararat by Atom Egoyan, it tell the story of the creation of a movie meant to shed light on the tragedy that was the Armenian genocide. A tragedy widely unacknowledged by most of the world. It also explores tragedy in the characters lives separate from the film, and how they respond to those tragedies. One character who gives an interesting response to tragedy is the customs agent, David. David learns about the Armenian genocide while interrogating the main character of the movie Rafi, upon his return to Canada from Turkey. He is somewhat an outsider whose tragedy is finding out about the Armenian genocide for the first time and realizing there is nothing he can do to change what happened.
From the beginning David is intrigued by what Rafi has to say. David asks him lots of questions and most of them do not include the normal questions a customs agent would ask someone they are interrogating. It is obvious he is sympathetic when learning about the genocide and is in disbelief that the Turkish government does not acknowledge any part of it. After hearing the whole history (in a

Because the movie Ararat is essentially a movie inside a movie, that also has other stories branching off of it, it has many different themes. One of the important themes in this movie is the importance of educating more people about the Armenian genocide so that it all those people who were killed will not be wiped from history with no importance. Another important aspect of remembering the Armenian genocide is that it impresses the importance of being vigilant so that nothing like that ever happens again. David plays a key role in guiding us through these themes. He gives us the perspective of an outsider who learned about the Armenian genocide for the first time. Learning about the genocide also influences him in the rest of his life as we see in later in the movie. If more people learned about it maybe one day the Turkish government would be pressured into acknowledging