Like almost all of Atom Egoyan's movies, 'Adoration' is self-consciously exploratory, gently tracing the boundaries and pressure points that exist between characters in a manner that asks resonant, sometimes troubling questions about wider political issues without needing to generalise from the specifics. Egoyan doesn't universalise, he doesn't simplify. He may be the least glib film-maker out there.
I was lucky enough to see him speak about this film after it screened at the London Film Festival. He was asked a question about the political content of the film; rather than claim that the film isn't political, as I have heard other artists do when confronted with this question about their work, he responded that the politics in the film are entirely located within the family - a refreshingly nuanced response.
He is also far more willing to risk losing an audience than almost any other director, pushing dramatic situations into absurdism or uncomfortable comedy, or outright confounding ambiguity, when it would be easier and more surefire to go for more conventional dramatic effects, like irony, or poignancy. For instance, the entire encounter between Arsinee Khanjian and Scott Speedman's characters, in which painful confession and angry confrontation are tempered by the awkward farce of the taxi-ride and invitation to lunch, the unsettling comedy of the confrontation with the taxi-driver, and, most opaquely, the utterly meaningless and consequence-free coincidence of Simon passing his uncle in a bus, and them failing to see each other.
Most impressive of all, I think, is the balance this film strikes between intellectual engagement and emotional detachment. After the screening, I told my partner that I'd found it moving, and he expressed surprise, as he valued the lack of sentimentality, almost the dispassion, of the film. Reflecting on it, I realised that when I used the word 'moved', I was using it to express a feeling separate from being emotionally invested in the characters in a film (as in, say, 'Mysterious Skin' or 'Magnolia', both of which sent me off into crying jags). Egoyan's films (with the exception of 'The Sweet Hereafter', which is heartbreaking and cathartic and, as it happens, my favourite film bar none) almost seem to displace my emotional investment into the structure of the movie, similar to the way music engages the listener - or, perhaps, more unusually, they displace it onto the ideas themselves; ideas like the psychology of martyrdom, the instant narrativisation of internet discourse and its consequences, the elusive boundaries of personal responsibility (a recurring concern in Egoyan's films), the conciliatory and revelatory aspects of art, and all the other stuff this movie left buzzing round in my head. If you'll bear with me, I think what I'm saying is that I feel a kind of emotional topography of ideas in Egoyan's movies, a recognition that intellectual frameworks and emotional responses aren't detached in people's lives; the characters, the structure and the brainfood are all connected, in sync; you aren't manipulated into crying, but you may just feel your heart aching all the same.
I was lucky enough to see him speak about this film after it screened at the London Film Festival. He was asked a question about the political content of the film; rather than claim that the film isn't political, as I have heard other artists do when confronted with this question about their work, he responded that the politics in the film are entirely located within the family - a refreshingly nuanced response.
He is also far more willing to risk losing an audience than almost any other director, pushing dramatic situations into absurdism or uncomfortable comedy, or outright confounding ambiguity, when it would be easier and more surefire to go for more conventional dramatic effects, like irony, or poignancy. For instance, the entire encounter between Arsinee Khanjian and Scott Speedman's characters, in which painful confession and angry confrontation are tempered by the awkward farce of the taxi-ride and invitation to lunch, the unsettling comedy of the confrontation with the taxi-driver, and, most opaquely, the utterly meaningless and consequence-free coincidence of Simon passing his uncle in a bus, and them failing to see each other.
Most impressive of all, I think, is the balance this film strikes between intellectual engagement and emotional detachment. After the screening, I told my partner that I'd found it moving, and he expressed surprise, as he valued the lack of sentimentality, almost the dispassion, of the film. Reflecting on it, I realised that when I used the word 'moved', I was using it to express a feeling separate from being emotionally invested in the characters in a film (as in, say, 'Mysterious Skin' or 'Magnolia', both of which sent me off into crying jags). Egoyan's films (with the exception of 'The Sweet Hereafter', which is heartbreaking and cathartic and, as it happens, my favourite film bar none) almost seem to displace my emotional investment into the structure of the movie, similar to the way music engages the listener - or, perhaps, more unusually, they displace it onto the ideas themselves; ideas like the psychology of martyrdom, the instant narrativisation of internet discourse and its consequences, the elusive boundaries of personal responsibility (a recurring concern in Egoyan's films), the conciliatory and revelatory aspects of art, and all the other stuff this movie left buzzing round in my head. If you'll bear with me, I think what I'm saying is that I feel a kind of emotional topography of ideas in Egoyan's movies, a recognition that intellectual frameworks and emotional responses aren't detached in people's lives; the characters, the structure and the brainfood are all connected, in sync; you aren't manipulated into crying, but you may just feel your heart aching all the same.