For many years, the focus of the dispute over the Armenian massacre was not "whether there was a massacre", but "whether Turkey is responsible for this crime". Under modern values, genocide is considered to be anti-human, which to a certain extent was caused by the slaughter of Jews in World War II. However, we must take into account that during the various aggressions and expansions in ancient times, genocide was not uncommon. At that time, there were no conditions for building gas chambers in concentration camps to carry out tragic human experiments. Genocide was nothing more than an act of conquering. Afterwards, young and middle-aged men who were able to resist in the city were massacred, while the elderly, women and children basically died of displacement or famine. However, thousands of years later, peoples and political powers have already had a lot of movement, so no one will be held accountable for hundreds of thousands of events. But the Armenian massacre happened at the junction of ancient and modern World War I. As one of the last few feudal empires, the Ottoman Empire still followed the pre-modern way of doing things. It dealt with minorities (Armenians) in the late period of the empire’s decline. Carried out an extreme ethnic policy, although it is worth condemning, it is not unique in history; the difference from the previous massacres is that humanity soon experienced a wave of large-scale national independence after World War II, and many descendants of the displaced Armenians went to Europe and the United States. Still maintaining unity and accepting modern values. In particular, Zionism has successfully won the right to speak in the international community, and these people have also seen the power of public opinion. At this time, the Armenians finally realized that we can also use the modern values of "political correctness" to condemn genocide as a weapon, and demand that Turkey give Armenian descendants a large amount of compensation. But at this time, although Turkey directly inherited the mantle of the Ottoman Empire, the great empire at that time has long been disintegrated and replaced by the new democratic republic. Then the Turkish government has to defend: why do we need to do things for the past regime Responsible?
Although the incident is distressing, the controversy over the Armenian massacre is not just a simple humanitarian distinction between black and white. So in fact, after watching this film, Akin did not make a gesture of "representing political correctness as a Turk." He just told an ordinary story to call the attention of the international community to this event, and the audience's position was natural. The director cannot decide. In fact, the only real slaughter scene in the film is only for the labors of the protagonist's team of about 20 people. The rest of the deaths and injuries are basically due to displacement or starvation. On the one hand, it prevents the film from going too bloody, and on the other hand, it tries to show the situation objectively. Compared with the beginning of "Alara Mountain", the Ottomans cut their eyes and blindly accuse the crime is indeed much milder.
Although there is too much to talk about in the whole film, it is suspected to be redundant, but I can feel that although the material is taken from the Armenian massacre to show Akin’s reasonable attitude, the main purpose of the film is to be born out of the event itself, and to face a wider nation. Immigration and other topics. In the current context of racial discrimination and immigration issues in the Western world, this will undoubtedly bring more in-depth thinking to a wider audience. Drawing on personal examples, and focusing on the path of finding relatives, it also guides the audience to jump out of the macro disputes between the bystanders "Mr. White Left" and "Conservative Reactionaries", and pay more attention to the individuals around us-assuming that we are in the protagonist In the situation, we actually don’t have the energy to care about which regime and nationality is right and wrong, and we only hope that we and our family will be safe; then, instead of getting into all kinds of unsolvable disputes, we should care about everyone around us. People who live in misfortune.
(One point worth mentioning: the best person in the film is the old Muslim who has taken in countless refugees in Aleppo; but thinking that Aleppo happens to be the hardest-hit area of the Syrian civil war, I still feel sighed. It is really thirty years in Hedong. Hexi for thirty years... bless the Syrians now)
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