Film

Adoration (2008)

Director: Atom Egoyan

Movie review

From Time Out Online

Admirably directed but too emotionally overwrought, Egoyan’s contemporary tale shoehorns a handy bunch of post 9/11 hot potatoes – terrorism as an extension of personal neuroses, the parallel world of the internet, prejudice towards the ‘other’ – into a local Canadian story that unravels in mysterious, jigsaw-puzzle fashion.

The mystery isn’t as intriguing as it threatens to be. High-school student Simon (Bostick) reacts to a class project set by his teacher Sabine (Khanjian) by announcing on the internet that his father was a Palestinian terrorist who persuaded his mother to carry a bomb on to a plane bound for Israel. (The truth is more mundane, if no less painful.) Debate rages online about the ethics of terrorist behaviour in scenes that don’t betray much real knowledge of the internet, and although there are intriguing ideas at play relating to childhood memory and trauma, the key narrative elements don’t ring true, and the relentless violins of Danna’s score push the film deeper into melodrama.

---

• 
•