A stylish film with a solid cast and equally solid acting. But it feels like an exercise film, the kind of filmic monologue one might produce for an assignment not unlike the story that the young hero concocts.
Adoration (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:72
Fresh:50
Rotten:22
Average Rating:6.5/10
Consensus: A complex and thought-provoking work, Atom Egoyan's Adoration works well as both mystery and engaging drama.
Theatrical Release:May 8, 2009 Limited
Box Office: $93,518
Synopsis: Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has spent most of his career exploring themes of identity and perception, and he returns to this territory again in ADORATION. Simon (Devon Bostick) is a bright... Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has spent most of his career exploring themes of identity and perception, and he returns to this territory again in ADORATION. Simon (Devon Bostick) is a bright high-school student who lives with his uncle, Tom (Scott Speedman), following the death of his parents, Rachel (Rachel Blanchard) and Sami (Noam Jenkins). When Simon visits Rachel’s dying father, he learns that Sami may have killed himself and Rachel by deliberately crashing their car. In Simon’s high school, his French and drama teacher, Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), reads a story about a terrorist who tried to blow up an airplane by planting a bomb in his girlfriend’s luggage. Simon claims the story is about his parents, telling the whole school that his father placed a bomb that failed to detonate in his mother’s carry-on. Sabine suddenly becomes close to Simon, while debate about his father’s actions lights up the school, with Egoyan carefully steering his film in several unexpected directions. Egoyan is a master storyteller who knows exactly how to subtly manipulate the timeline of ADORATION to keep his audience on their toes. The truth behind the death of Simon’s parents slowly unravels as the film progresses, and the juxtaposition in values between Simon and Tom is thoroughly examined. Egoyan cleverly uses Simon’s obsession with Internet chatrooms to give insight into the escalation of interest in his false declaration about his parents’ past, but he is always painted as a sympathetic character whose fantasy life has toppled over into reality as he struggles to come to terms with a terrible tragedy. Bostick’s performance as Simon is exceptional and thoroughly convincing, and pushes ADORATION toward the heady heights of Egoyan’s best work in EXOTICA (1994) and THE SWEET HEREAFTER (1997). [More]
Starring: Devon Bostick, Arsinee Khanjian, Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard
Starring: Devon Bostick, Arsinee Khanjian, Scott Speedman, Rachel Blanchard, Noam Jenkins, Yuval Daniel, Jeremy Wright, Thomas Hauff
Director: Atom Egoyan
Director: Atom Egoyan
Screenwriter: Atom Egoyan
Producer: Atom Egoyan
Composer: Mychael Danna
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
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Reviews for Adoration
Steeped in relentless (and often clumsy) symbolism, and hamstrung by a frustratingly disjointed narrative, it's puzzling for all the wrong reasons.
Cinephiles who thought Atom Egoyan went off the rails with the tawdry cheese of "Where The Truth Lies" will be happy to see "Adoration," which shows the Canadian filmmaker once again in fine, austere form.
The movie's fractured structure and contrived subplots obscure a potentially affecting story and do nothing to advance the debate on any of its incendiary issues.
It will likely test the limits of some viewers, though those with patience may find a few things to like. There's definitely no shortage of ideas, that's for sure.
...a complicated and not altogether successful rumination on identity, technology, terrorism and the nature of truth.
As thoughtful, calculated, somber and cold as a heavily footnoted term paper...
Adoration is rich with political themes about ethnicity, a complex story about family history, a thoughtful young protagonist and a fascinating look at the way we communicate through the latest social-networking tools.
A gimmicky, sad and beautifully acted mystery that keeps its secrets even when it loses its grasp of the logical.
After a promising start, this ambitious but ultimately clunky and unwieldy movie dissolves into a pile of ideas in dire need of dramatization.
Adoration may be driven by Egoyan's usual weighty concerns, but too often it operates on cruise control.
A pretentious, naval-gazing pity party thrown for condescending, affected blowhards.
Egoyan’s ham-fisted commentaries on religion, terrorism and xenophobia are so needy they make Crash perpetrator Paul Haggis look subtle.
Egoyan is nothing if not low key; and as dramatic as passages are here, he keeps the tone under control and the story believable.
Bostick turns in a quietly mesmerizing performance, capturing Simon's sense of loss without slipping into pathos.
No one else would have made a film about these people, exploring these ideas and taking these kinds of mysterious risks... but it all amounts ambiguously to being either the best of Egoyan's weaker films or the shakiest of his good ones.
In Atom Egoyan's disconcerting and unpredictable Adoration, a young man's attempt to make sense of himself and his family's history turns strange when his re-imagined version of that history becomes a combustible topic for online chatter.
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