Adoration
Directed by Atom Egoyan
B-
Just when icy Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan entered the mainstream with 1997’s The Sweet Hereafter, he jumped the shark. For his fans this was like living the One Froggy Evening Looney Tunes classic: The director, having been talked up for years, now had people’s attention (plus an Oscar nom), and then proceeded to churn out Felicia’s Journey, Ararat and the racy bomb Where the Truth Lies. Bur if it’s true you can’t go home again, Egoyan finds himself somewhere in the vicinity with Adoration, a near-return to form that feels downright retro.
We’re introduced to the story in media res and in dispersed shards. A glum teen (Devon Bostick) begins a viral implosion when he regales webcam peeps of how his Jordanian father (Noam Jenkins) was a terrorist who tried to blow up his mother (Rachel Blanchard) while he was in her womb. As it turns out, this is a lie, encouraged by his French teacher (Egoyan regular and wife Arsinée Khanjian) for reasons that naturally become clear late in. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is the teen’s blue-collar uncle and guardian (a surreally credible Scott Speedman).
It’s been so long since Egoyan’s been relevant that it’s a shock to note the sizable impact he’s had on current filmmaking trends. In retrospect this whole everyone-is-connected shtick—as seen most noxiously in the cinema du Paul Haggis and Guillermo Arriaga—basically started with his kaleidoscopic art-house head-scratchers like Family Viewing, Speaking Parts and Exotica.
The difference? There’s more on Egoyan’s mind than shocking revelations. There’s that, too, with secrets held close to the chest and revealed, in gasp-inducing moments, at steady intervals. But floating freely around the plot mechanics are heady ideas about victimization, terrorism, self-delusion, lies-as-truth, etc. Unlike Ararat, Adoration manages to tether the Big, Important Notions to an intimate family psychodrama.
This is the Egoyan we knew and loved—almost. In practice he’s a bit rusty, and while his film blossoms in its second half, it only gets smaller and concise in its third. Moreover, his ideas about video and technology isolating us—which seemed eerily prescient in his ’80s films—now seem almost campy given that they’ve basically come true. Still, dude might be back.
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