Atom Egoyan’s Ararat is essentially a film about a film, initially setting itself up as an illusion that eventually dissolves into horrific reality. Ararat is as much a comment on the structure of narrative, the art of acting, and the hard labor going into making a film as it is about the 1915 Armenian genocide. Comparisons to Schindler’s List are inevitable (Egoyan is of Armenian descent, and purportedly made this film to explore the genocide of his people as Stephen Spielberg did for Schindler’s List), but Ararat is markedly different in many different ways. The heart of this film’s success is Egoyan’s willful refusal to draw lines between memory and film production, between a film director’s artistic license and the hard reality of actual events.

Edward Saroyan (a stoic and philosophical Charles Aznavour, who vaguely reminded me of a latter-day Martin Scorsese) is directing a film about the famous painter Arshile Gorky, who fled Turkey in the wake of the genocide. He hires Ani (Arsinee Khanjian) to be an historical consultant, as she has written books about the painter. The film is at first focuses on the sharp contrast between Ani’s view of Gorky’s life and how the glossy, glamorous Hollywood sound stages are telling Gorky’s story. But the “fakeyness” of the seemingly overproduced costume-drama takes an unexpected turn as the production digs deeper into the horrors of the genocide. Ararat makes a nod at the hard craft of acting; two actors portraying an American doctor and a Turkish general explain at length how they immerse themselves into their roles. In its opening scenes, Ararat fools you into thinking this movie will be yet another drawing room drama of New York intellectuals musing over their insecurities; rather, Ararat evolves into a painful journey into Gorky’s memories as he creates his masterpiece “The Artist and his Mother.”

Ararat does not flinch with its depiction of the genocide; Turkish soldiers gleefully rape, torture, and burn alive Armenians left and right. I had to close my eyes after one officer explains how to methodically smash a person’s ankle, and then a child is hauled into a backroom for this operation. You don’t see the child being tortured, but you do hear his high-pitched screams. All of these horrors are witnessed by Gorky, alternately portrayed as a child by Garen Boyajian and as an adult by Simon Abrkarian. For me, the most fascinating actor was Ali (a slick, John Malkovichesque Elias Koteas), a Turkish-Canadian actor who confronts his own willful ignorance of the genocide. (To this day, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide). In my favorite scene, Ani’s son Raffi (David Alplay)and Ali discuss how effective Ali has been in playing the evil Turkish general. Raffi admits that Ali was successful in inspiring unbridled hatred against the character. Both men share an awkward moment acknowledging Ali’s “successful” portrayal. And to me, that is what the craft of film is all about.

Other key scenes involve an aging customs agent (played by the reliably rock solid Christopher Plummer) interrogating Raffi about film canisters he is bringing from Turkey into the US. In another surprising turn, the interrogation evolves from a cat-and-mouse chat about whether Raffi is a drug smuggler to a meditation upon the nature of truth and belief. Each interweaving narrative serves to advance Gorky’s story, until the major characters eventually become minor characters in Gorky’s life, even though Gorky hardly utters a word in the film. Egoyan did a superb job in setting up the shifting perspectives of each character, tying them together into a series of uncomfortable truths.

A powerful but not at all sentimental film, I can see how some people would find Ararat almost too clinical in its detached tone. Yet I got a sense that the stoicism of Gorky perhaps mirrors the stoicism of Egoyan in contemplating the horror of the Armenian genocide. The director Saroyan poses the rhetorical question of how and why his people came to be a target of so much hatred; Ararat leaves you to answer that question on your own. Whether this film exaggerated or understated the horrors of 1915, Ararat makes an admirable effort in keeping the memory of Armenian genocide alive using subtlety, film-craft, and internalized pain.