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Adoration Explores The Nature Of Terrorism And Martyrdom

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  • Adoration Explores The Nature Of Terrorism And Martyrdom

    ADORATION EXPLORES THE NATURE OF TERRORISM AND MARTYRDOM
    SHELDON KIRSHNER

    Canadian Jewish News
    http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_conten t&task=view&id=16825&Itemid=86
    May 6 2009

    In his 12th feature film, Adoration, Canadian director Atom Egoyan
    veers off into the harsh terrain of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rachel
    (Rachel Blanchard) and Sami (Noam Jenkins) in their bedroom. (video)

    Scheduled to open in Toronto on May 8, Adoration is Egoyan's first
    overtly political movie since Ararat, which turned on the 1915
    Armenian genocide.

    Adoration is based on a terrorist incident in April 1986 in which a
    Jordanian national of Palestinian origin, Nizar Hindawi, attempted
    to plant Semtex plastic explosives aboard an El Al plane en route
    from London to Tel Aviv.

    Hindawi, who had ties with Syria's intelligence services, placed
    the bomb in the handbag of one of the passengers, Ann-Marie Murphy,
    his pregnant Irish girlfriend.

    A simple, apolitical person, she had no idea that she was cynically
    being used as a pawn in a deadly struggle. If Murphy had made it past
    security guards, Hindawi would have detonated the bomb, killing some
    400 people.

    This is Egoyan's point of departure. In a series of scenes that frame
    Adoration, the Irish woman, known here as Rachel (Rachel Blanchard),
    faces an Israeli guard as she tries to board flight 016. In a thick
    Israeli accent, he asks her a number of routine questions. Her answers
    set off alarm bells, and she is not permitted to get on the aircraft.

    Fast forwarding, Egoyan focuses on Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), a
    tormented Toronto high school French teacher from Lebanon who gives
    her students a translation exercise on the Hindawi affair.

    Much to Sabine's consternation, the assignment has an unsettling
    effect on one student, Simon (Devon Bostick), an orphan who pretends
    to be the son of the Irish woman, and on her career.

    Simon reads his essay in class and then posts it on the Internet. The
    reaction triggers an emotional debate on chat lines: is Hindawi a
    monster or a hero?

    After a Holocaust survivor condemns Hindawi, a neo-Nazi praises him
    as a hero. Their respective opinions symbolize the gamut of views on
    this explosive issue.

    At once dark and mysterious, and distinguished by understated
    performances, Adoration shifts between the terrorist incident and
    its unforeseen repercussions in Toronto two decades later.

    Egoyan's film, which is typically opaque and detached, explores
    interlocking themes ranging from the complexities of convoluted
    relationships to the nature of terrorism, martyrdom, victimhood,
    western penetration of Muslim lands, Islamic extremism and modern
    technology.

    In touching on these diverse but connected topics, Egoyan adopts a
    cool, neutral tone, refraining from declaring his own sympathies.

    His neutrality may be disturbing to some viewers, but it heightens
    tensions and endows Adoration with a certain edge.
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