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2009 Aaron Poole Arsinée Khanjian Atom Egoyan Canada Devon Bostick Dominic Cuzzocrea Duane Murray Geraldine O'Rawe Hailee Sisera Ieva Lucs Jennifer Weiss Katie Boland Kenneth Welsh Laurent Pétin Marcy Gerstein Maury Chaykin Michèle Pétin Noam Jenkins Rachel Blanchard Robert Lantos Scott Speedman Simone Urdl Soo Garay Stephen Traynor
First Review: The opening scenes of "Adoration" play very much like a dream, or more accurately, a memory that's struggling to resurface through fragmentation and speculation. Even when things start coming together by the middle and end sections, it still seems like it's trying to remember something based not only on what the characters tell themselves happened, but also on what other say happened. They also have pretty strong opinions on what didn't happen, although it certainly could have happened. By the end of the film, the audience comes to understand that it's not at all about what did or didn't happen, but about the emotional bewilderment that comes with knowing and not knowing. It's a labyrinthine but engaging plot made up of out-of-sequence flashbacks and flash forwards, and for added weight, it's all contained under the thematic umbrella of religious intolerance.
No, this movie doesn't let you off easy. You have to pay attention. You have to think. You have to keep in mind that, in real life, not everything resolves itself. Much of what the audience sees is just as open to interpretation as the characters think it is, which is to say that there's no reality, only observation. I'm not trying to say that "Adoration" is a confusing mess; I'm saying that it's a fascinating and deep depiction of people in a confusing mess. It's also meaningful, although I admit some of the emotional impact is lessened by writer/director Atom Egoyan's reliance on serendipity, an inherently contrived concept as far as screenplays go. There are connections in this story that seem just a little too well-placed to seem genuine, and that ultimately does more to detach the audience.
Nevertheless, its examinations of people and how they're perceived make up for the film's narrative flaws. We're asked to watch closely as an incredibly coincidental story is gradually revealed. At the end, we're not asked to accept what we've just seen as truth, but as perception. Early on, we're told about an American woman who married a man from the Middle East. When the woman gets pregnant, the man says he wants nothing to do with her or her child. But then, inexplicably, he comes around. He then talks her into meeting his family in Israel; she flies there by herself, and he claims he'll meet her there. The fact that a husband isn't traveling with his pregnant wife makes an airport security guard very suspicious, and when he searches her bag, he finds an explosive device that would have gone off on the next flight.
We're also told about a teenager named Simon (Devon Bostick), who's coerced by his French teacher, a Middle Eastern woman named Sabine (Arsinée Khanjian), to read his English translation of the foiled terrorist attack in front of his class. As an added bonus, he must convince his class that his mother was the pregnant woman and his father was the terrorist. His paper ignites a firestorm of Internet chatroom activity, starting with his classmates before spreading to their parents and then to countless others. The responses are passionate, ranging from tirades against Middle Eastern culture to praising Simon's father for bring the truth to light. One young woman coaxes her grandmother to walk up to the webcam and reveal her arm, which is tattooed with Holocaust prison number; a white supremacist retaliates by revealing his own arm, which is tattooed with the words "Six million lies."
If Simon's parents had nothing to do with the attempted terrorist attack, then who exactly are they? More importantly, who is his father? Interwoven all throughout are flashback sequences of Simon's Middle Eastern father, Sami (Noam Jenkins), and American mother, Rachel (Rachel Blanchard), who we sometimes see rubbing her expanding belly as she stands in front of a suspicious airport security guard in Israel. Tormented by the mysterious nature of their deaths, Simon has been struggling to figure things out since moving in with his uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), a tow truck driver who tries to ignore the prejudiced teachings of his intolerant father, Morris (Kenneth Welsh). Simon uses his cell phone to film Morris as he lies in a hospital bed, clutching the violin Simon's mother loved playing ever since she was a little girl.
What is this all leading up to? Is there a point to it all? Yes, although it's not so much about the actual point as it is about making it. To say anything more specific would be unfair, but I will ask you to consider an interesting scene in which Tom is approached by a woman whose face is concealed by a Burqa. As he sets up a Nativity scene for Christmas, Simon appears and says to the woman that the Jews consider Jesus Christ a prophet. "But not a messiah," the woman replies, "which is why ... they killed him." There's more to this moment than meets the eye, but don't know it until much later on, when we discover how all the fragmented bits of story fit together. Some bits are so well fitted that they actually detract from the plot, the tension relieved by connections too clever to be plausible. Still, "Adoration" achieves a great deal, both as an analysis of human behavior and an exercise in unconventional editing. Its greatest achievement, however, is telling a story in which perception is more important than reality.
Category: Drama
All Genres: Drama
Release Year: 2009
Country: Canada
Runtime: 100 minutes
Rating: 6.8/10
Languages: English
Director:
Sound: Dolby Digital, SDDS, DTS
Writing by :
Atom Egoyan - writer
Produced by:
Atom Egoyan - producer
Marcy Gerstein - associate producer
Robert Lantos - executive producer
Laurent Pétin - executive producer
Michèle Pétin - executive producer
Stephen Traynor - line producer
Simone Urdl - producer
Jennifer Weiss - producer
Music By:
Cast:
Scott Speedman - Tom
Rachel Blanchard - Rachel
Kenneth Welsh - Morris
Devon Bostick - Simon
Aaron Poole
Dominic Cuzzocrea - Cab Driver
Katie Boland - Hannah
Noam Jenkins - Sami
Arsinée Khanjian - Sabine
Geraldine O'Rawe - Carole
Duane Murray - Parking Security
Hailee Sisera - Jennifer
Maury Chaykin
Soo Garay - Anna / daughter
Ieva Lucs - Irate Woman
Official Website:Visit Website
Plot: High school French teacher Sabine gives her class a translation exercise based on a real news story about a terrorist who plants a bomb in the airline luggage of his pregnant girlfriend, which would have killed her, her unborn child, and many others, but was discovered in time. In the course of translating, Simon, who lives with his uncle Tom, imagines that the news item is his own family's story, where his Palestinian father Sami was the terrorist, the woman was his mother Rachel, an accomplished violinist, and he was her unborn child. Years ago, Sami crashed the family car, killing both himself and Rachel, making Simon an orphan. Influenced by his racist grandfather (we see Simon filming him with his mobile phone when he talks to him), Simon has always feared that the crash was not an accident but intentional. Simon reads his version to the class. Sabine asks him to develop the story as a drama exercise, and for dramatic effect pretend that it really happened. So he does, and discussions evolve on the Internet about the story. Sabine is fired for making Simon lie.
Tom, who is a tow truck driver, tows Sabine's car away. Sabine follows him in a taxi, and by mobile phone offers him a meal in a restaurant. Later she reveals to him that she had been married to Sami for 5 years, until Sami met Rachel.
Goofs:
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- YouTube: Adoration (2008) trailer [HD 720p]
