I was excited to see Atom Egoyan’s latest, Adoration. Back in 1997, I watched his film The Sweet Hereafter and was profoundly affected by it. I quickly gobbled up many of Egoyan’s earlier works including Next of Kin, Family Viewing, Speaking Parts, The Adjuster, and Exotica. We have all these here at the store. None matched the depth, breadth, and performances of The Sweet Hereafter, but each showed his unique sensibility and intrepid journeys into the world of our personal stories, family stories, the stories we tell ourselves and believe.

Adoration is about such stories. A high school French teacher reads to her class a newspaper story about a woman who falls in love with a man from the Middle East, gets pregnant, and is sent to Bethlehem to meet the man’s family. The man professes his love, but has planted explosives in her luggage, presumably to kill the 300+ passengers, the woman, and their unborn child. Authorities intercept it before she boards the plane. One of the students in the French class, Simon, retells the story in the first person, as if he had been the unborn child of the woman. This creates quite a reaction from Simon’s classmates and many others, and we see the spirited participants in a virtual chat room on the divided screen of Simon’s Macbook. The movie’s themes include religion and politics, loss, alienation and distrust, and coming of age. At the same time there is the unraveling (or not) of a mystery.

Adoration is made on 35 mm film, rather than digital. The contrasting images of Simon’s computer somehow don’t seem out of place, though, but add to the mix the critical role that cyberspace plays in our lives. This movie is not perfect, but it is provocative. It was perhaps a bit odd and disjointed, but I didn’t mind. The point of view of the film and the symbolism were both somewhat ambiguous, and I cherished this respect for the viewer’s own ability to interpret. The cast is spare, but powerful.  Simon is played with both confidence and innocence by Devon Bostick, and Scott Speedman, of all people, gives a strong turn as Simon’s uncle. Maury Chaykin Kenneth Welsh’s performance as Simon’s grandfather has an Archie Bunker flavor, without the humor. Arsinee Khanjian, Egoyan’s wife whom he often features in his movies, portrays the teacher, perhaps the most complex character in the movie.

I wasn’t a big fan of the soundtrack, which was rife with screechy violin music, but no doubt others will enjoy it and even deem it enhancing to the movie.

I’m not going to say too much about how the story unfolds. I recommend Adoration highly, though. It brought me back to the ’90’s (okay and the late 80’s too), that golden decade of Independent Film, when directors like Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Todd Solondz, Joel and Ethan Coen, Steven Soderbergh, P.T. Anderson, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino and of course Atom Egoyan, offered up films that eschewed mediocrity and made us think. – [DVD]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 10/13/09

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