WEB OF LIES: ATOM EGOYAN EXPLORES THE POWER OF THE INTERNET IN ADORATION
Martin Morrow
CBC.ca
May 5 2009
This article originally appeared during the 2008 Toronto International
Film Festival.
Atom Egoyan looks toward a window and the late-afternoon sun catches
the brass rims of his signature round glasses. The celebrated Canadian
director is perched on a chair in a hotel room and is discussing
Adoration, his 11th feature. At the time of our interview, it was
receiving its North American premiere, at the Toronto International
Film Festival.
"Maybe this is just a very sophisticated, high-tech version of The
Boy Who Cried Wolf," he says, gesturing with his slender hands as
he neatly – if superficially – summarizes his own film. Actually,
like those specs of his, Adoration is classic Egoyan: an elegantly
constructed puzzle about family and identity, elusive truth and
deceptive technology – in this case, the internet.
The film centres on Simon (the soulful-eyed Devon Bostick), an orphaned
Toronto teen from a Muslim-Christian couple, who makes up a story that
his Arab father was a terrorist who attempted to blow up an Israeli
airliner in the 1980s. The fantasy begins simply as a school writing
exercise, but Simon’s teacher (played by Egoyan’s wife, Arsinée
Khanjian) encourages him to perform it as a dramatic monologue –
and to not reveal that the story is fiction. The compelling tale gets
Simon’s fellow students talking via an internet chat room. Before long,
the ruse has gone viral, provoking a passionate online debate about the
aborted act of terrorism that draws in academics, Holocaust survivors,
neo-Nazi skinheads and trauma junkies.
The false history is Simon’s way of working out his confused feelings
about his parents’ deaths in a car accident when he was 10. As we
discover, Simon’s racist grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) has told him a
disturbing version of how they died, while the boy’s laconic uncle
(Scott Speedman), who knows the truth, has never discussed it.
Egoyan, who wrote as well as directed the film, calls it a
coming-of-age story for the internet age. "Simon is a young man at
that point where he’s beginning to question certain orthodoxies and
truths which have been imposed on him," Egoyan explains. "He uses
any available means to investigate and determine who he is and how
he got where he is. In a way that’s really an age-old quest, but with
this new technology."
Devon Bostick stars as the orphaned Simon, who tries to unravel
a mystery surrounding his parents’ deaths in Adoration. (Seville
Pictures/Maximum Films) Egoyan has always had empathy for young
people. They figure prominently in many of his films, from his first
feature, Next of Kin (1984), through his best work, including Exotica
(1994) and his masterpiece, The Sweet Hereafter (1997). He says he
finds adolescence an exciting and tumultuous time. "What fascinates
me about people at that age is that they are ready to question things
and have the possibility of determining a future for themselves,
which can be vastly different and more progressive than that which
they’ve been born into."
Simon in some ways resembles Egoyan as a kid. The 48-year-old director
was born in Egypt to Armenian parents and grew up in Victoria,
B.C., where high school drama played a big role in his own coming of
age. "There were a lot of issues that I was trying to understand in
my own upbringing and when I began to do high school drama, it just
had a huge effect," he says. "I couldn’t believe what I got to do,
working with friends and creating these alternate realities." One time,
he and his pals created a fictitious candidate for student council
president. "We had this whole series of posters, and on the nomination
day, we made up this story where our candidate couldn’t make it and we
brought out a tape recorder with a prerecorded speech that he wanted
to deliver to the students. All that stuff was just so exciting for
me. So if I was a kid now, I would certainly look towards the net."
The director’s teenage son, Arshile, is already doing that. "Oh yeah,
he creates terrorist plots on the internet all the time," Egoyan jokes.
It has to be said that Adoration is a flawed film, but it’s still
a welcome return to a more intimate style of filmmaking for Egoyan
after his last picture, Where the True Lies. That period thriller,
set in the sleazy backstage world of American showbiz, starred a
miscast Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth and was a flop. Adoration had
one-fifth the budget, and features an all-Canadian cast in which
ex-Torontonian Speedman (of Felicity fame) is the only box-office name.
Egoyan says the L.A.-based actor sought out the role himself. "He
read the script and liked my films, so he flew himself up here to
audition." As Tom, Simon’s uncle, Speedman plays a city tow truck
driver who adopted and raised his nephew on his own after the boy’s
parents died. Egoyan had written the character for an actor in his
40s. However, when the 32-year-old Speedman read the part, Egoyan
says he was "floored."
Arsinee Khanjian plays a high school teacher with mysterious motives in
Adoration. (Seville Pictures/Maximum Films) "I realized the nature of
the sacrifice his character makes — which is to give up his own life
to look after his nephew — is way more affecting to a person in their
early 30s. It meant he gave up his 20s to look after his nephew. That
seemed to be more touching. It was one of those rare situations where
an actor, completely of their own volition, changed my mind like that."
One of Adoration’s distinctive Egoyan characteristics is its non-linear
narrative – the story shifts between past, present and fantasy in
graceful transitions that the director credits largely to the work
of cinematographer Paul Sarossy, editor Susan Shipton and composer
Mychael Danna. I asked Egoyan why he didn’t want to tell the story
in chronological order.
"That’s something everyone keeps asking about," Egoyan replies. "It’s
just a very natural style for me to work in. When you’re dealing
with issues of memory retrieval and how histories are placed and
displaced, it just seems an organic way of recounting that. I was
really influenced by the French filmmaker Alain Resnais, and the films
he made in the late ’50s and early ’60s, like Hiroshima Mon Amour,
Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel. He was one of the first filmmakers
to use that technique."
While Adoration deals in some of the dangers and lunacies of the
internet, Egoyan is by no means a Luddite when it comes to the
web. Quite the contrary: he’s addicted to YouTube. "It’s embarrassing,"
he says with a laugh. "It’s just compulsive. I can’t believe what’s
been recorded. I can’t believe the access I have to shows and pop
figures and events from my own childhood. The other day I was having a
conversation about the golden days of the NHL, talking about my hero,
the goaltender Gerry Cheevers. So last night I typed in ‘Gerry Cheevers
Boston Bruins’ on YouTube and there were clips of him. The most obscure
and arcane areas of fascination can become fetishized and traded now."
At the same time, Egoyan sees the limitations of cyberspace. He says
that’s why, in the end, Simon has to abandon his laptop and make a
physical journey to come to terms with his past. "As loaded as the
web is, it’s too effortless for a rite of passage," he says. "I don’t
think you can find catharsis through the internet."
Adoration opens in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on May 8.