Reaction to "Ararat" by Atom Egoyan

The film used narrative to hypermediate the audience, in that a film was shown within the film. The use of image as a narrative is shown within the perspective of Gorky's introduction into the film as an "added character". Gorky was placed into the storyline because his painting (and image) of the genocide from his perspective. The photograph and painting take on the role as a character within the narration. The codes of the photo progress into a storyline, revealing Gorky as a real person and subsequently telling the "true" story of the massacre. His presence within the Hollywood-drama film is not an attempt to use these first hand descriptions or narrations of the event but rather to exploit his position as a painter, drawing "truth" through image and code. Therefore, I feel as though the film as a whole develops around Gorky's image of the massacre as a painting. Contrast to the photo, the painting begins to speak of the genocide in ways the photograph never could, in that Gorky's emotional input as an artist elevated the image into a primary historical hierarchy. The blurring of the figures hands, the brush strokes and Gorky's intimacy with the event itself act as codes revealing the image as a narrative that cannot be told within a movie of the event or even a movie of a movie of the event.