The Sweet Hereafter play set.
Tag: Director: Egoyan
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2009 SFIFF Diary 1
Adoration (Atom Egoyan)
There’s certainly no mistaking an Atom Egoyan film — the non-linear narrative, the technology fetish, the intertwined obsessions with history, identity, and trauma, and all of those secrets and lies. Closest in spirit and form to Ararat, Adoration is another interesting jumble of ideas from Egoyan that, to my surprise, works more often than other critics had led me to expect. I especially like the scenes between Scott Speedman and Arsinee Khanjian, who are the only two actors in the film who consistently make Egoyan’s dialog sound like words an actual human being might speak. (In Egoyan’s defense, the performance of language and identity is a central concern — and plot point — of the film, so some of the awkwardly-heightened language is clearly by design. Egoyan alerts the attentive viewer to this fact by formal means, though I’m not sure if that defense justifies the unfortunate shifts in tone he creates.) Egoyan’s at his best when he manages to balance his wealth of ideas with drama, when his characters transcend the intellectual and psychological conceits they are intended to embody. That happens often enough in Adoration, particularly in the final act, to make it my favorite of his films of the last decade. (I’m still eager to see Citadel.) One final note: Mychael Danna’s original score is fantastic, but I’d prefer to hear it alone on a soundtrack album. I suspect I would have liked Adoration a good deal more if Egoyan had trimmed 75% of the music cues.
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
God bless you, Catherine Breillat. When Bluebeard started last night around 9:40, San Francisco time, I’d already been awake for 19 hours. Who else under those circumstances could put me at the edge of my seat, giggling and gasping at the nerve of a film? A playful and stylized period piece in the (formal) vein of Rohmer’s Astrea and Celadon, Bluebeard is a wicked dismantling of a fairy tale that, although lacking Breillat’s trademark nudity and explicit sexual content, is no less obsessed with bodies. Mary-Catherine (Lola Creton), Bluebeard’s young bride, is one more Breillat heroine, tempted by, curious about, and fearful of both sexual desire and by sex itself — by the physical, biological realness of it. I can’t think of a better image to represent Breillat’s cinema en toto than a shot of the massive, shirtless Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) being watched unnoticed by his waif, virgin wife. Brilliant film.
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Calendar (1993)
In Atom Egoyan’s remarkable film Calendar (1993), a photographer and his wife (played by Egoyan and Arsinee Khanjian) travel to Armenia to take pictures of ancient churches for a calendar project. Once there, they are led through the countryside — and through the country’s historical narratives — by Ashot Adamian, an Armenian man who tells stories, sings native songs, and, eventually, vies for Khanjian’s affection. It’s a love triangle, but one with interesting metaphoric weight. Egoyan, the intellectual Westerner far-removed from his Armenian roots, is juxtaposed against Adamian, and Khanjian stands somewhere in between, torn between two symbols of her own hyphenated identity.
Khanjian is, in both a literal and metaphoric sense, the film’s translator, and the process of translation — with all of its inevitable frustrations and miscommunications — is the film’s main subject. Specifically, Egoyan is concerned with telling the stories of the Armenian diaspora, all the while knowing that culture, politics, technology, and human memory will constantly reshape and reinterpret those stories. Like Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up, Calendar represents this dilemma even in its form, blurring the lines between documentary and narrative film, fact and fiction.
Made for German television and with a budget of only $100,000, Calendar is one of the most compelling and stylistically inventive films I’ve seen this year. Typical of Egoyan’s work, it is structured around twelve, non-linear episodes (one for each month of the calendar) and alternates between film and video footage. At times, the characters address the camera directly, their improvised dialogue lending the film some air of verisimilitude; at others, it all has a very staged feel, particularly when we watch Egoyan, now back at home in Canada, going through the rehearsed motions of dating. Calendar is quite a display of filmmaking — probably Egoyan’s best, this side of The Sweet Hereafter.
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Grace, Too
I have been following The Tragically Hip since becoming enamored of Atom Egoyan’s film, The Sweet Hereafter. His use of the Hip’s “Courage” is pitch perfect. Although I’ve never had a chance to see them in concert — the Canadian band seldom makes trips to the American South (and I don’t really blame them) — this version of “Grace, Too” just kills me. It has the ecstatic energy of the best live performances, but it’s something about that bass line and the way that Gord Downie unleashes the line, “Armed with will and determination / And grace, too,” that rips me up.
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The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Dir. by Atom Egoyan
Images: Beautiful compositions in 2.35:1. Notable images: close-up of infant Chloe’s face beside open knife blade; Nicole’s face with rotating Ferris wheel over her shoulder; Mitchell, wife, and child asleep together on mattress. Egoyan constantly returns to wide-angle shots of the sky and the Canadian landscape as a means of representing man’s insignificance in relation to nature. The images of snow-covered, tree-lined mountains, gray skies, and frozen lakes contrast beautifully with the warm interiors of the small town and the close-ups of its inhabitants. The flesh tones reflect their environment: soft and natural when inside, slightly blue when out.
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There’s a scene in The Sweet Hereafter in which Mitchell Stephens — a big city ambulance chaser played to perfection by Ian Holm — sits in a cramped airplane seat, telling the passenger beside him a story from when his daughter, Chloe, was a child. The shot is framed with Holm’s face in a tight close-up, his companion to our left, her eyes fixed intently on his. During the entire, nearly six-minute monologue (there is only one brief interruption — a cutaway to a flashback), neither actor turns his or her head more than an inch. Holm’s eyes never look away from the back of the seat in front of him. And yet, it’s one of the most riveting moments from any film I’ve seen.
And it exemplifies why Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter might be the best film of the 90’s. Stephens’ story is a step into an idyllic past. “It was a wonderful time in our lives,” he says. “We still thought we had a future together, the three of us.” Like Egoyan’s film, the lawyer’s story is an attempt to create a narrative from tragedy as a means of controlling and (hopefully) escaping its grief. The result is a film that is captivating despite — or perhaps because of — its preoccupation with sadness. Its very beauty is catharsis.
Mitchell Stephens arrives in Sam Dent shortly after a school bus accident takes the lives of many of the small town’s children. Stephens’ goal is to unite several of the families in a class action lawsuit against the “deep pockets” who are to blame. For the parents, placing blame becomes a release, a means of turning their attention momentarily from loss and grief and reuniting the community. Many of Sam Dent’s residents are recognizable from Egoyan’s earlier films. Maury Chaykin and Alberta Watson play Wendell and Risa Walker, the proprietors of the town’s only motel and plaintiffs in the law suit. Bruce Greenwood (the lead in Exotica) is Billy Ansel, a widower who loses both of his children in the accident, but who refuses Stephens’ offer. Arsinee Khanjian (Egoyan’s wife) and Earl Pastko are Wanda and Hartley Otto, another couple grieving for their only child. And Gabrielle Rose plays Delores Driscoll, the bus driver who loses so many of “her children” in the accident.
The acting is dynamic throughout. Of particular note is the performance of Sarah Polley (Exotica), who plays Nicole Burnell, a survivor paralyzed in the accident. The film demands that she strike a balance between the innocence of childhood and the pain of tragic experience (an important side plot reveals that the bus accident is not the only traumatic experience Nicole is forced to overcome). Polley’s approach is wonderfully subtle and understated. She has said of her performance: “The only way I feel I’m not faking it is to do nothing at all. I really don’t consider myself an actor, or a performer, but maybe as someone able to fill whatever void there is among actors who do too much.” As in Holm’s monologue, Polley is filmed almost entirely in close-ups and medium shots, directing our attention to her remarkably expressive eyes.