Adoration (Tuesday, December 22, 2009) (206)

Adoration is a very interesting, complicated film by Egyptian/Canadian writer/director Atom Egoyan. In it, he tells the story of Simon, a teenager whose parents were killed in a car accident about 8 years earlier. His father was a Palestinian immigrant and his white mother was a professional violinist. During a class exercise in school, he writes a fictional story about how his father was a terrorist who tried to send his mother on a mission to bomb an airplane. When this story gets out to the kids classmates, and ultimately his whole community, it churns up a tremendous amount of turmoil.

There is a lot to digest and get through in this story. It is told in a very choppy format, where the entire chronology is only visible near the end of the film. Flashbacks and fantasy sequences are mixed in with the present to a degree that reality becomes unclear and fact becomes somewhat conditional on a number of variables.

At it's heart, the film is a story of forgiveness and a search for truth. Simon's family life, which seemed clear and solid while his parents were alive (when he was a young boy) is turned into a nightmare in his memory, with help from his divisive grandfather and the fiction he writes about his parents. The story is also about the way that we can forgive the dead for possible transgressions they might have committed - even after they are unable to defend themselves.

Throughout the film, the acting is fantastic. Devon Bostick, who plays Simon is very good and believable as a vulnerable, inquisitive and experience-hardened young man. Scott Speedman does a great job as Simon's protective and exhausted uncle who takes care of the boy after his parents die. Arsinee Khanjian is also wonderful as the boy's teacher who pushes him a bit too far and then feels guilty for her experiment.

This film, strangely, did not have much of a release in the U.S. (I think it played for only a few weeks in New York), but it is very good and very interesting. It is a thinking film - one that is not easy to end and know what to make of immediately. It is possibly a bit too intricate considering the size, but I think this adds to the mystery of the story. I like the questions the film brings up and appreciate the care that Egoyan gives to the unusual story.

Stars: 3 of 4