TRAGEDY’S LINGERING EXPLOSIONS
Argus Weekend (South Africa)
September 20, 2009
Catastrophe is the internal combustion of Atom Egoyan’s movies. Recall
the skidding school bus from 1997’s The Sweet Hereafter, in which
a small town reels from the deaths of 14 children, or the legacy of
the Armenian genocide that dizzies the characters in 2002’s Ararat.
In Adoration, which feels like the completion of a trilogy of grief,
the catastrophe is prevented. Four hundred people do not die on an
aeroplane bound for Tel Aviv because security catches a bomb that
was placed in a pregnant woman’s bag by her Arab husband.
The film follows a Toronto high-schooler named Simon, who is encouraged
by his teacher to translate and retell the old news story in French
class – as though he were the unborn child of the woman unintentionally
carrying the bomb.
The class is rapt, and Simon suddenly becomes a symbol in a debate
about martyrdom versus mass murder. His story hits the web, and then
everyone is in on the discussion (even passengers from that aborted
flight).
The bomb that didn’t go off aboard the flight instead goes off years
later in the classroom, on the internet and at home, where Simon has
been raised by his brooding uncle since his mother and father died
in a car crash a decade earlier.
The complex story structure teeters between the revelatory and the
absurd, depending on how much you buy the irritating-then-intriguing
performance by Arsine Khanjian, who plays Simon’s teacher.
Lending much-needed realism are Devon Bostick, smart and searching as
Simon, and Scott Speedman, pained and cynical as Simon’s guilt-ridden
uncle.
Adoration is a delicate rumination on how innocence and truth evolve
in the aftermath of catastrophe, as people stake their emotional
ownership in tragedy.
Simon finds himself without territory to claim in his parents’ death,
and his teacher thinks the best way to the truth is through a lie. Some
might call this manipulation – of character and of viewer. Others would
rightly call it an exercise. A provocation of debate. – Washington Post
Adoration Directed by: Atom Egoyan Starring: Devon Bostick, Scott
Speedman, Rachel Blanchard, Noam Jenkins Running time: 100 minutes