Adoration [Blu-ray] [2008] [US Import]

From first frame to last, I had no idea what was going to come next in this thought-provoking film from Canada. Others here may attempt to sum up the plot, but the dream-like, stream of conscious connections that lead from one scene to the next are what I found fascinating. The movement is back and forth in time, until it's hardly clear what the "present" is, while one assumption after another about characters and their motivations is turned on its head. What you think is true turns out to be only sort of so, and each revelation pulls you in even farther.

This is a movie for grown-ups, asking questions about the post-9/11 world we live in and wanting us to make sense of the fear and confusion around terrorism. Characters are not totally clear cut. A schoolboy, his teacher, his uncle, his grandfather, and his dead parents all draw our sympathy at times and then behave in ways that make us question their judgment.

Meanwhile, as a story about the boys' parents, which may or may not be true, explodes into chat rooms on the Internet, it ignites a fury of public discourse that takes on a manic life of its own. The social environment, as mediated by digital technology, becomes a kind of Bedlam, where reason becomes completely unmoored. Without giving too much away, the film finally finds a small respite of calm for its characters to regard each other with a degree of trust, while paranoia and pandemonium rage on around them. Well worth watching, "Adoration" portrays challenging ideas about the world we live in and argues for a measure of sanity to be found in connections between people who have little in common but their need to be at peace with each other.

Soaking in Atom Egoyan's `Adoration', I sit here wondering if my analysis is really all that accurate. The film, while flawed in my eyes, is so controversially provocative that I wonder if it is `better' than I'm giving it credit for. It may very well be. I have a feeling that `Adoration' will fare the same way as Van Sants `Elephant'; a film that resonates deeply with me over time yet always feels like a film I should consider a masterpiece can't quite bring myself to.

The film revolves around a kid named Simon who concocts a strange plan to deceive his entire school by placing himself inside a real life story about a failed terrorist plot. When doing an exercise in French class, he gets inspired and begins to translate a news story in the first person, from the perspective of the son of a man who attempted to blow up a plane. His teacher, who also happens to be the drama teacher, eggs him on until he invests so much of himself into this story that it begins to become his reality.

What it spawns it pretty phenomenal.

The first three quarters of the film is pretty great. What happens once Simon's `fake story' goes viral is controversially chilling; watching people become sucked into this faux reality, living a tragedy that never really happened but now happened inside their minds because it has a face and a name now. Watching Simon begin to test the waters with his `humanizing' the tragedy by placing the title `father' on the face of a killer can raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

It's a gigantic set up, which may be the reason why the big `reveal' seems underwhelming. This is where I am torn. Last night while I was watching the film I felt agitated that the ending was so anticlimactic, but this morning the ending carries a heavier weight with me, since it subtly brings the film to an intimate place.

It makes it feel real.

Yes, I found Sabine's revelation to feel a tad forced and maybe even clichéd (after it was revealed it felt lazily expected) but upon reflection the actual ending, while a tad too sympathetic for the tones of the film, seemed appropriate. It did seem like an odd diversion from the apparent focus of the films first half, which gave `Adoration' an air of disconnect, but overall it lays well on one another. Like I said, this is a film that will bother me for some time to come.

The acting here is rather superb. The mood presented is also very well captured. I had issues with the handling of the flashbacks, for the music used and the color palate presented gave it almost a soap opera feel, which felt cheap and campy at times. I also felt that the films constant time shifts were very confusing in the beginning. It all panned out in the end, but it took a while to get the drift of what was being presented.

Still, `Adoration' is a haunting piece of modern filmmaking that does justice to Egoyan's name and talent (his '97 masterpiece, `The Sweet Hereafter', is one of the best films ever made; EVER). It will challenge you, and that is what all good films do. I also want to discredit the claims that this film is preachy. It is anything but. The film very subtly allows the audience to invest themselves in multiple sides of a story and try to understand the viewpoints of others without taking sides once. That is a feat unattained by many but completely attained by Egoyan here.

I am new to this (Canadian?) director's work, so I can't compare this movie to his previous ones. I don't know if it is better or not, but I do know that it is quite good enough to be worth my time.
A high school student is encouraged by his French teacher (who also does the Drama group) to enact and develop a scenario, which is based in a true story, as if it was his own: the boy's (Palestinian?) father had put explosives into his mother's travel bag on a plane to Israel, while she was pregnant with the boy. The bomb had not exploded. The boy, Simon, reads `his story' to his class and then on the net.
The `drama' grows out of hand and proliferates in chat rooms. Simon lives with the fiction and makes wild statements. He gets feedback from people who were on the real plane that had been supposed to blow up. He is called by Neo- Nazis who proudly parade their Holocaust denial tattooed on their skin. He is called by a young woman who makes her grandmother show her camp number tattoo on her forearm. Young people debate the theory of terrorism.
In real life Simon lives with his uncle. His parents had died in a car accident. The grandfather had not been happy with his blond violinist daughter marrying a dark foreigner (a Lebanese?). To Simon, he calls his father a `killer'.
There is a real dimension of mystery. We do not know how much of the wild story is true. That's why any review must stay away from being too explicit with the plot.
The narration is slow, maybe slower than necessary. There are flashbacks and sidesteps.
Simon is the center, but more and more, his teacher moves into focus. She turns out to be more involved than expected.
If you want a simple tale moving from A to B with a clear message, this is not for you. If you can stand coming out of it without the feeling that you have been told how the world works, then you may appreciate the contemplative pace of this movie.