Business Day (South Africa)
September 19, 2009
Weekend Review Edition
Adoration, identity in an electronic age
by: Phillip Altbeker
Egoyan’s latest is, typically, interesting and frustrating, says
PHILLIP ALTBEKER
THE truism that the films of Adam Egoyan can be infuriating and
frustrating yet always interesting because of his oblique approach to
narrative is certainly applicable to his Adoration. His most
accessible movie was The Sweet Hereafter (1997) based on the Russell
Banks novel about the crash of a schoolbus and its effect on a small
community. Terrific performances from Ian Holm and Sarah Polley
brought out the grief of the mourners and the feelings of the
insurance assessor dispatched to investigate the devastating incident.
That was preceded by Exotica (1994); set mainly in a strip club, it
examined the lives of the participants and the spectators, in the
process revealing connections that come out in the course of a tax
audit of a pet shop.
Felicia’s Journey and Where the Truth Lies were more conventional
stories but, as treated by Egoyan, they took on unexpected depth as he
delved into characters, their thoughts and actions. Ararat (2002), one
of his most honoured films, was deemed unfit for local consumption; it
dealt with a director (Charles Aznavour) working on a drama placed
within the context of Turkey’s alleged massacre of Armenians during
the First World War.
In the course of filming, present-day Canadians of Armenian descent
try to relate to the event and its effect on their generation.
Born in Cairo to Armenian parents who relocated to Canada, Egoyan
became the best-known director working in the shadow of Hollywood by
rejecting the cinematic conventions associated with commercial
filmmaking. Determined by nature and inclination to be different,
Egoyan often gives the impression he is unable to distinguish between
pretension and substance, a charge that could be levelled against
Adoration.
Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian, the writer-director’s wife and frequent
collaborator), a teacher, gives her teenage class a translation
exercise based on a news item about a Palestinian who sends his
pregnant girlfriend to meet his family in Bethlehem.
Unbeknownst to her, he has packed a bomb in her hand luggage, the
morality of his potentially lethal deception giving rise to a heated
discussion on the internet.
The assignment deeply affects Simon (Devon Bostick), one of the
students, who fuels the debate by so identifying with the incident
that he adopts it as his own history. His parents were killed in an
accident that he begins to believe may have been deliberate and his
sense of loss adds to his need to find completeness and closure in the
fate of presumed strangers.
Raised by Tom (Scott Speedman), his uncle, Simon is absorbed into the
story and convinces himself, and others, that he was the child being
carried by the duped woman.
Fantasy and reality become intertwined until the truth emerges and a
connection that manages to be both surprising and predictable is made.
Egoyan uses imagination’s ability to see parallels where none might
exist and combines it with modern technology’s tendency to give even
the most trivial personal thoughts of anyone with access to the web
widespread credibility, as if the medium was created solely to enforce
his ideas on coincidence and interconnectivity.
Adoration remains a provocative study of identity and a telling
critique of the possible misuse of communication tools.
"Fantasy and reality become intertwined until the truth emerges and a
connection that manages to be both surprising and predictable is made"
REWRITING OUR HISTORIES: Tom (Scott Speedman), Sabine (Arsinee
Khanjian) and Simon (Devon Bostick) are caught up in a conflict
between truth and fiction.