Review of America America (2012) by Dave J — 29 Mar 2016

"America, America" starts in Anatolia in 1896 where Stavros(Stathis Giallelis), a Greek, and Vartan(Frank Wolff), an Armenian, scrape by on bringing ice down from the mountains to sell in the market. As bad as things are them for right now, they are about to get a whole lot worse with the Turkish authorities using the excuse of a fire at the central bank to crack down on the minorities, leaving Vartan dead and Stavros frustrated to try and leave for America. After giving his shoes to a beggar on the road, he returns home at the end of the day. By then, his father(Harry Davis) has seen the writing on the wall, too, intending to send Stavros to Constantinople to seek out his cousin in order to pave the way for the rest of his family.

Every family has a story to tell about how they came to live in America and this is Elia Kazan's personal one about his uncle, grandly told in a suitably epic fashion, with Haskell Wexler's sublime cinematography, that does get a little muddled towards the end. Along the way, we get a great sense of what it was like at the time and what it took to undertake such an arduous journey,(just getting to Constantinople is risky enough) which does not change a person so much as the people they encounter along the way. If you know the history of the region(specifically the Armenian genocide and what little I gleaned from Jeffrey Eugenides' novel 'Middlesex'), then you know what happens next and the timing could not have been any better for Stavros and family.