DIRECTOR EGOYAN CHALLENGES WEB "CLICHE"
Bob Tourtellotte, Reuters
Ottawa Citizen
May 22 2008
Canada
CANNES, France (Reuters) – Who said the Web was worldwide? Not director
Atom Egoyan, whose new film "Adoration" explores just how confining
cyberspace can be when a teenager confronts a culture clash that has
damaged him and his family.
"Adoration" premiered on Thursday at the Cannes film festival, and
following a press screening, Egoyan challenged the notion that the
World Wide Web has fostered a global community.
"That’s the cliche of the Internet, but the reality is that it exists
in small interest groups," Egoyan told reporters.
In "Adoration," the key character is a Toronto teenager named Simon
who confesses to a small Web chat room containing only his friends
that his Middle-Eastern father planted a bomb in the suitcase of
his Canadian mother, who was pregnant with Simon at the time, as she
boarded a plane to Israel.
The bomb was discovered, and no one was hurt. But Simon’s confession
touches off a firestorm of controversy on the Web and fuels a wide
range of reactions — from sympathy to empathy and from love to hate.
But Egoyan does not see the response as coming from a singular
collection of people all connected by the Web, but rather as reactions
by different groups of Web users who have happened onto a small piece
of information on the Internet.
"These are ultimately really closed communities that are responding
to each other. It’s just drowned out by kind of a global noise,"
Egoyan said.
Moreover, the Web is just one part of a multi-layered story in
"Adoration" that ultimately tells of one teenager coming to a new
understanding of himself, as well as his family’s dealing with the
pain and loss of Simon’s mother and father who come from vastly
different worlds.
EAST MEETS WEST
Egoyan’s background lends credibility to the idea that he is
well-suited to talking about growing up across cultural boundaries. His
parents are Armenian, he was born in Egypt, raised in Canada, where
he still makes his home.
"Adoration" is a nod to all sorts of symbols people use as ways to
identify themselves and, ultimately, as weapons to exert control
over others.
Simon, who confesses his story in the chat room after his French
teacher reads the tale of his parents from an old news clipping, finds
himself steeped in the Christian religion symbolized by a Nativity
scene his uncle, who is now raising Simon, sets up at Christmas.
Simon and his Uncle Tom’s beliefs are challenged by a Middle-Eastern
woman wearing a burqa who happens by their suburban home one evening
and returns later to further place herself into their lives.
But as Egoyan sees it, he was not so much trying to talk about the
clash of Eastern and Western cultures as much how that conflict exists
in modern life for all the world’s people and, in particular, how it
has impacted Simon and his family.
"We’re all interconnected. These stories all reverberate in ways we
cannot understand at times," he said. "You have three characters
who were all using these props of religions or these ancient
traditions. That’s exactly what they’ve become in a way. They’ve
become props. They’ve been cut off from their original intentions
and are being used for other purposes."
For Simon and for most people, the wielding of those props people
claim to adore — as Egoyan puts it — can have damaging consequences.