Last year, Atom Egoyan’s Adoration won the Ecumenical Prize at Cannes (recognizing “films that have a spiritual dimension and plumb the depths of the human condition.”) Babel and Cache are previous celebrated winners of the Ecumenical Prize, but Adoration has taken a more circuitous route through the distribution maze. Having run out of festival venues, Adoration is finally having a limited US release this weekend. Matt Mazur at PopMatters scores an interview with Egoyan:
Mirroring the story’s emotional and imagined mysteries is the actual look of the film, with innovative usage of light and shadow to convey mood, belying the film’s smallish $6 million budget. “It would be the same movie no matter the budget, said the director. “At $30 million, you’d have to make a different film; you wouldn’t be able to use these structures.” Egoyan said he was going for a “heightened reality” in the golden-hued flashback scenes where we are introduced to Simon’s parents. “I wanted it to seem of another world,” he said, adding that the look was achieved specifically through the use of master shots with long lenses and specific types of lights to produce “a sense of contrast, it was carefully composed. I didn’t want it to seem surreal, but as though it was existing on another plane of reality.”
Virtually all the reviews of Adoration have been by generated in the blogosphere, and very few are in English. Matt’s examination is one of the best and definitely worth checking out. Some stills and posters after the cut.