Three many years after the 1915 Armenian Genocide, an optimistic American Armenian returns to his Sovietized homeland, solely be thrown in jail underneath flimsy circumstances. From his squalid jail cell, he friends day by day into the house and inside lifetime of one in every of his Armenian jail guards, and inadvertently finds the cultural connection he’d been trying to find. This broad premise informs the sentimental comedy-drama of “Amerikatsi” (or “The American”), Armenia’s shortlisted worldwide Oscar submission. Written and directed by Michael A. Goorjian, who additionally stars within the main position, it’s a transferring work about diasporic craving, coming to us as historical past repeats itself, after greater than 100,000 ethnic Armenians had been compelled to flee Nagorno-Karabakh earlier this yr.
The film’s dreamlike prologue follows a younger Armenian boy escaping the brutality of the Ottoman Military throughout World Struggle I, peering out of a tiny gap in an ornate baggage trunk. The inside of this field is embossed with the serene picture of Mount Ararat which, whereas situated in fashionable Turkey, holds deep significance as a nationwide image for the Armenian folks. A long time later, this boy — now a middle-aged Poughkeepsie native, “Charlie” Bakhchinyan (Goorjian) — takes benefit of Joseph Stalin’s program to repatriate displaced Armenians, however stumbles headfirst right into a Soviet household comedy of types, although he’s none the wiser.
After helping the disgruntled Armenian spouse of a high-ranking Soviet official, brewing jealousies and crossed wires result in Charlie — who’s fluent in English, speaks scattered Armenian and is aware of not a lick of Russian — being locked up for the crime of carrying a polka dotted tie. Earlier than lengthy, his day by day routine entails stale bread, exhausting labor and propping himself up at his window to gaze into the small however humble residence of one in every of his jail guards, echoing his defining childhood occasion, as if he had been doomed to dwell life at a take away and consider it by way of a pinhole. Nonetheless, what begins as mere leisure for Charlie finally blossoms right into a portrait of cultural isolation, as he slowly picks up on bits of Armenian tradition and customs from afar.
As Charlie (who the jail guards nickname “Charlie Chaplin”), Goorjian brings a strong comedic vitality to the display screen. He would really feel at residence in a movie by Jacques Tati as he creates humor by way of his physicality, warping the material of any scene the second he steps right into a room. His animated efficiency goes hand-in-hand along with his preliminary conception of Charlie as a stereotype of an American visiting one other nation, drawing consideration by way of his loud brashness and his ignorance of native customs. The truth is, Goorjian — an American of Armenian descent — makes use of this preconception of Americanness to create a hapless, helpless protagonist whose unbridled optimism appears naive, earlier than he unwraps the character layer by layer, revealing him to be defiantly hopeful regardless of adversity. Although comical on the outset, his efficiency finally ends up soulful and devastating. When Charlie grows thinner and extra gaunt, an unstated component of the drama is whether or not or not he’ll be capable to maintain on to the glimmer of sunshine in his eyes.
Goorjian offers that gentle bodily kind by way of his filmmaking. His story is born by way of the back-and-forth reducing between Goorjian’s personal refined, distinctly “cinematic” efficiency — during which his eyes replicate cozy living-room lights within the distance — and the stage-like gesticulations of Hovik Keuchkerian and Narine Girgoryan, who play the bickering Armenian couple whose day by day life turns into Charlie’s cleaning soap opera. The very act of trying turns into enrapturing, as if “Amerikatsi” had been a movie concerning the magic of films (à la “Cinema Paradiso”) however with the projector and the silver display screen stripped away.
Finally, the 2 opposing modes of visible storytelling at its core (one distinctly intimate, the opposite distant and observational) come into explosive contact like matter and antimatter, as the thought of artwork metaphorically gazing again at its viewer takes distinctly literal kind. It’s a second that not solely twists the screws of Goorjian’s zany plot, however seems like lightning because it unfolds, a tonal oscillation mirrored by composer Andranik Berberyan’s fixed use of each upbeat comedic jazz and wistful Armenian people.
If there’s criticism to be lobbied at Amerikatsi it’s that it stays largely unconcerned with the brutality wrought upon Charlie and his fellow prisoners, or with the psychology of its quite a few Armenian guards who oppress their kinsmen on the state’s behest. As an alternative, it stays tethered to Charlie’s perspective (typically to a fault). And whereas holding again on these extra rigorous explorations permits it to blossom as a “feel-good” movie about atrocity (within the vein Roberto Benigni’s “Life is Lovely”), Goorjian additionally employs a mischievous sleight of hand in terms of these concepts. They continue to be mere implications within the film’s margins for probably the most half, however he causes them to return crashing down all of sudden, in a quick however highly effective second late into the runtime.
What might sound mawkish on paper finally ends up deeply affecting in observe. Like British playwright Tom Stoppard, whose latest manufacturing “Leopoldstadt” masterfully explored his connection to his Jewish-Austrian roots — and his separation from them after the Holocaust — Goorjian reaches deep into Armenian cultural reminiscence and searches for his place inside it, as an artist adrift from his household’s tradition and homeland, compelled to see at it and study it from a distance. He even dedicates the movie to his grandfather, a survivor of the 1915 genocide, thus framing the story as an intimate fantasy of reclaiming the elements of himself which had been ripped from his palms lengthy earlier than he was born. Within the few moments his historical past and tradition lastly really feel inside attain, “Amerikatsi” overflows with nostalgia and unabashed tenderness. A balm for even probably the most hardened souls.
