Tropic Sprockets / Amerikatsi

by Ian Brockway

Michael A. Goorjian has a warm and moving film about one man’s Armenian awareness in “Amerikatsi.” The film is stirring and big-hearted with touches of fantasy.[Showtimes and trailer at TropicCinema.com.]

The film has a tragicomic tone echoing the film “Life Is Beautiful” (1997). Charlie (Director Goorgian) escaped the Armenian Genocide during WW I and he moves back in the 40s when the Soviets are in control. Reasoning that Charlie is spreading Western propaganda by his contemporary suit and tie, an official Dmitry (Mikhail Trukin) sentences him to hard labor. His wife objects, to no avail.

Charlie is sequestered in a dark gray cell with harsh iron bars. One day, he is drawn to a picture window across from his cell with the perfect perspective of a movie screen. Charlie visually peers at an Armenian painter Tigran (Hovik Keuchkerian) and his wife (Narine Grigoryan). After a few days, Charlie is hooked watching Tigran paint, argue with his wife and host family dinners. He soon identifies with Tigran’s family, only eating when Tigran does as well. Being a voyeur allows Charlie to re-affirm his Armenian heritage. These voyeuristic passages are some of the film’s best moments recalling Alfred Hitchcock‘s “Rear Window” (1954) with its meticulous and deliberate panning camera, seeming to angelically glide from the left to the right and back again. Although no murder is going on here, Tigran’s hulking form and big shoulders strikingly recall Raymond Burr’s in Hitchcock’s earlier film.

Though Charlie has seen the horror of genocide, he keeps a light heart intact for the most part. throughout the film, he is referred to as “Charlie Chaplin.” Charlie’s usually quirky spirit, especially with children, echoes Roberto Benigni. There are further aspects of “Life Is Beautiful” as well in this film. Dmitry’s wife and savior is very much like Dora in Benigni’s film, both compassionate, angelic, and somewhat otherworldly. Both female characters are the voice of empathy and reason, traits absent in times of war.

A kind of whimsy also exists in Goorgian, but more evident here is the actor’s pensive shock which speaks volumes.

This film is masterful, and the last moments quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as much as Samuel Beckett. “Amerikatsi” is a lesson from history, but it is also strikingly, a showcase of Michael A. Goorjian’s versatile talents.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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