Mayrig (1992)
Directed by Henri Verneuil

Film Review

Henri Verneuil, one of France's most commercially successful filmmakers, concluded his high-profile career with his most personal work, a two-part film adapted from his semi-autobiographical novel Mayrig, first published in 1985.  This intimate period drama spanning four decades represented a substantial departure from the kind of films that had earned Verneuil his name - raucous comedies such as L'Ennemi public numéro un (1954) and stylish modern thrillers like Le Clan des Siciliens (1969) and Peur sur la ville (1975).  In the first part of his valedictory diptych, titled Mayrig (meaning 'Mother' in Armenian), Verneuil concentrates on an Armenian family's attempts to settle in France in the aftermath of the Armenian massacre of 1915, which is now widely accepted as the first genocide in modern times.

Drawing on his own childhood memories, Verneuil weaves an authentic and, at times, intensely poignant account of the difficulties faced by immigrants as they try to gain acceptance and a livelihood in a foreign land.  Little incidents, such as the family's attempt to find somewhere to cook their evening meals when their racially intolerant neighbours deny them access to their kitchen, strike a chord and remind us of the difficulties faced by today's immigrants in integrating themselves into their adopted countries.  Surprisingly, the tone of the film is mostly upbeat, and whilst genuine human suffering is never far from the surface, Verneuil prefers to look back on his past with rose-tinted spectacles, stressing the noble self-sacrifice of little Azad's parents and aunts rather than dwelling on their personal hardship.  A scene in which the family attempts to rid their rented hovel of a hideous bedbug infestation is played for laughs, not sympathy - exactly as a small boy of Azad's age would see it.

Verneuil is not one to brush aside the atrocity of the Armenian holocaust, however.  He opens his film with the trial of an Armenian man, Soghomon Tehlirian, charged with murdering Talaat Pacha, one of the perpetrators of the Armenian massacre.  Tehlirian is revealed to be a survivor of the holocaust and his defence lawyer justifies his act by describing, with the aid of witnesses, the crimes that were carried out at Pacha's decree.  With graphic verbal accounts of death marches, executions and babies ripped from the bellies of pregnant women, Verneuil brings home the full horror of the Armenian massacre, and revisits this later in a flashback sequence depicting one of the death marches.  In this latter sequence, we are confronted with the stomach-turning spectacle of one Armenian man's humiliation and mutilation at the hands of his sadistic Turkish tormentors.  In Verneuil's entire oeuvre, there is nothing as horrific and viscerally shocking as what we are forced to watch here.  This is what a genocide looks like - an ugly affront to human decency.  You want to weep but you are too shocked to do so.

After this, Verneuil makes no further reference to the Armenian massacre and the film slips into the cosy groove of an inoffensive nostalgia piece, for the most part feeling like a poor relation of Yves Robert's La Gloire de mon père / Le Chateau de ma mère (1990) diptych.  Verneuil is clearly no Marcel Pagnol and whilst there is a warmth and sincerity to his film, there is also an obvious lack of depth and coherence.  The director reserves his passion for his allusions to the holocaust which has evidently haunted him all his life, and so the feelings he evokes elsewhere in his film are less intense and sometimes come across as a tad superficial.  Only in the boy Azad's relationship with his mother and father (played by a suitably subdued Claudia Cardinale and Omar Sharif) does Verneuil truly hit the mark and elicit genuine human feeling rather than a synthetic substitute.

In the film's second half, Azad's adolescence and early adulthood are telescoped to the point that they hold little interest, and so the film loses both its focus and its dramatic power.  The saccharine conclusion is almost as hard to stomach as the earlier scene depicting bodily mutilation and provides the spectator with little incentive to watch the film's sequel 588, rue Paradis (1993).  Were it not for its references to one of the most shameful episodes of the twentieth century, Magrig would be a pretty inconsequential sentimental drama.  The film's real value lies in the fact that it places us in direct connect with those who lived through the Armenian holocaust, and as a result our eyes are forever opened to the horrors that can result when racial intolerance is allowed to develop into racial hatred.  Imperfect as it is as a piece of film drama, Mayrig contains some invaluable lessons for out time.

Film Synopsis

In 1921, a shipload of Armenian refugees arrive in Marseilles, hoping to begin a new life.  These include six-year-old Azad Zakarian, his father Hagop, his mother Araxi and his two aunts Anna and Gayané.  They are the survivors of a genocide perpetrated by the Turkish army against the Armenian people in 1915.  In spite of the difficulties they face, financial hardship and racism, Azad's parents are prepared to do everything they can to ensure that their son has a decent education and can make a successful future for himself in his adopted country...