Reviews

Dr. Raphael Lemkin created the word Genocide in describing what happened to the Armenians by the Turkish government. He was trying to bring attention to the Jewish people in Germany.

The movie was an exposure in what happened during World War I in Turkey to the Armenian people. It was tied in with a love story along with the brutality. Had it not been for the American press, the Danish and German missionaries who bravely documented the atrocities and helped the Armenians, no one would have known the extent of the carnage.

It was a great picture, and it went by quickly. The acting was realistic. Christian Bale did a realistic performance as the AP reporter.

I saw this movie at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. It truly was a wonderful package. All parts come together. After the film, the audience gave it a standing applause. It was a hit with the audience, including myself. I would see it again. Robert Carlyle was very good as the sympathetic baker, consumed by his wife's death, and inadvertently drawn into an emergency situation. The director/writer incorporates his older film of a boy's experience of being forced to go to dance and charm school, melding it perfectly with the now adult man's perception played by John Goodman. Others in the film were Marisa Tomei, Mary Steenburgen, Donnie Wahlber, and Sean Astin, all giving a wonderful performance.

Made both myself and spouse aware of facts we did not know. The documentary was so well done and passed so quickly. We had difficulty leaving the theatre and wished there was so much more. This film should be a requirement of at least college students if not a required film for high school history students. The Cuban missle crisis was enlightening at not realizing only the intervention of Tommy Thompson kept us out of WWIII. But what left me totally numb was the Viet Nam issue. I started crying. I did not realize they lost 27% of their population, nor of their 1000 year history of fighting the Chinese. Both of us were not aware of the fire bombing of Japan during WWII, and only knew of Dresden, Germany. Excellent film and only knew about it from the film critic of the Wall Street Journal who rated it as one of the year's best films.