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BURDEN OF DREAMS: ATOM EGOYAN'S ADORATION
Indie Wire
May 4 2009
If Atom Egoyan weren't in such a hurry to cram all sorts of
up-to-the-minute gewgaws (vidchats, xenophobia, handheld video
recorders, even terror attacks) into the unwieldy, disjointed
contraption that is his twelfth feature, Adoration, he might have
turned out a mildly entertaining, if overly intellectualized piss-take
on 1940s B-grade family melodrama--it even comes complete with
shimmering Bernard Hermann-esque strings. Adoration's the unlikely
spawn of Ararat's politically correct historical guilt complexes and
the lurid classic noir drag of Where the Truth Lies, and while it
betters both of its immediate predecessors (generally by leaps and
bounds, it must be said), it's still a fairly silly affair. Imagine a
dickless Leave Her to Heaven with a degree in media studies. Compulsive
in his inability to abandon his "core concerns"--those things that
auteurs are generally required to repeatedly insert into their films,
whatever the cost to watchable dramaturgy, which here include screens
within screens, the distancing, seductive pull of technology, and the
shiftiness of identity--Egoyan clutters a generally workable mystery
with the deadly weight of dusty concepts.
Egoyan's best films jumble narrative and fracture perspectives around
certain recurring themes (usually loss, absence, and memory). Until
Exotica his actors succeeded more as examples of inspired pornoesque
amateurism, but given his tendency of late to write ideas rather than
characters, the increasing equality in emphasis between performance
and structure has proven deadly. Both Ararat and Where the Truth Lies
suffered from weak protagonists: David Alpay's slim shoulders proved
unable to bear the heavy weight of suppressed Armenian genocide,
and the latter's Alison Lohman, though game, wasn't vamp enough for
a role that required tough, knowing sexuality. At Adoration's center
is an Egoyan male in the Alpay mode--frail, pretty, intellectual,
and largely vapid. Devon Bostick's Simon is a high schooler obsessed
with the death of his parents who is goaded by his French teacher
(Arsinee Khanjian)--for reasons unknown--into delivering a lengthy
monologue to his classmates in which he recasts his family history
through the lens of an aborted terror attempt, with his father as
the terrorist and his pregnant mother the unwitting bomb mule. As
the young'uns do these days, Simon takes his story to the internet,
creating an explosive debate that ricochets throughout a set of
implausibly staged video chatroom discussions (maybe he should have
Tweeted) and back into the nonvirtual world.
Indie Wire
May 4 2009
If Atom Egoyan weren't in such a hurry to cram all sorts of
up-to-the-minute gewgaws (vidchats, xenophobia, handheld video
recorders, even terror attacks) into the unwieldy, disjointed
contraption that is his twelfth feature, Adoration, he might have
turned out a mildly entertaining, if overly intellectualized piss-take
on 1940s B-grade family melodrama--it even comes complete with
shimmering Bernard Hermann-esque strings. Adoration's the unlikely
spawn of Ararat's politically correct historical guilt complexes and
the lurid classic noir drag of Where the Truth Lies, and while it
betters both of its immediate predecessors (generally by leaps and
bounds, it must be said), it's still a fairly silly affair. Imagine a
dickless Leave Her to Heaven with a degree in media studies. Compulsive
in his inability to abandon his "core concerns"--those things that
auteurs are generally required to repeatedly insert into their films,
whatever the cost to watchable dramaturgy, which here include screens
within screens, the distancing, seductive pull of technology, and the
shiftiness of identity--Egoyan clutters a generally workable mystery
with the deadly weight of dusty concepts.
Egoyan's best films jumble narrative and fracture perspectives around
certain recurring themes (usually loss, absence, and memory). Until
Exotica his actors succeeded more as examples of inspired pornoesque
amateurism, but given his tendency of late to write ideas rather than
characters, the increasing equality in emphasis between performance
and structure has proven deadly. Both Ararat and Where the Truth Lies
suffered from weak protagonists: David Alpay's slim shoulders proved
unable to bear the heavy weight of suppressed Armenian genocide,
and the latter's Alison Lohman, though game, wasn't vamp enough for
a role that required tough, knowing sexuality. At Adoration's center
is an Egoyan male in the Alpay mode--frail, pretty, intellectual,
and largely vapid. Devon Bostick's Simon is a high schooler obsessed
with the death of his parents who is goaded by his French teacher
(Arsinee Khanjian)--for reasons unknown--into delivering a lengthy
monologue to his classmates in which he recasts his family history
through the lens of an aborted terror attempt, with his father as
the terrorist and his pregnant mother the unwitting bomb mule. As
the young'uns do these days, Simon takes his story to the internet,
creating an explosive debate that ricochets throughout a set of
implausibly staged video chatroom discussions (maybe he should have
Tweeted) and back into the nonvirtual world.