I’m an Atom Egoyan virgin. I’ve somehow floated past the solar
system of his filmography (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter,
Felicia’s Journey, Ararat). But what a delightful little
box of fear his newest, Adoration, is.

Adoration stars Devon Bostick as Simon, a Canadian high
schooler who reveals to his classmates that his father (Noam Jenkins)
was a would-be terrorist who used Simon’s pregnant mother (Rachel
Blanchard) as an unwitting accomplice in an attempt to blow up an
airplane. The plot was averted — and so Simon was born —
but the kid struggles with who he is and with the possible
justification of his father’s monstrous actions. He also masterminds
conflict and confrontation on the subject in online video chat rooms
between his classmates, their parents, and actual “survivors” of the
failed terrorist action. He’s a smart boy. He’s also an orphan, his
parents dead due to unclear circumstances.

Or perhaps the star is Arsinée Khanjian as Sabine, Simon’s
French-class teacher who encourages her pupil to explore his emotions
with his dramatic reading of his nativity story. She may not be the
most ethical of schoolteachers.

And then again, maybe the star is Scott Speedman as Tom, Simon’s
uncle (the brother of Simon’s mom) and adopted father. Tom’s dad
(Kenneth Welsh) tells Simon that Tom “never figured out what his talent
was except trouble and mischief.” Speedman impresses as he juggles four
frames of reference: uncertain father-guardian, grieving brother, and
embattled son (the fourth I can’t specify for spoiler reasons).

Adoration flips around in time like a bat. Often, films with
screwy chronology do so to appear more profound than they are. But,
Adoration does so to reveal further depth. By making the
viewer’s trek less certain, emotional causes and effects flow up and
down and fit together just so. You eventually forget who’s the most
guilty and for what exactly. Simple cinema guilt — the fare of
most movies — is blurred and enhanced into the complex common
guilt of the real world. Adoration is a little like a Canadian
Caché.

There are big ideas in the film: xeno-panic, the appeal of
victimhood, the seduction of ideas, the tyranny of capitalism, the
specter of terror, and the nature of terrorists. Adoration does
more than touch on these but doesn’t get distracted from the task at
hand, a personal tour of one family’s pain. The film perhaps climaxes
with a quiet scene in which a Western man has a conversation with a
Middle Eastern woman who’s in a burqa and dramatic veil. They speak in
a warm living room backlit by a Christmas tree, the Canadian winter
swirling outside.

Adoration is like a multifaceted diamond, held aloft. The
jewel is formed in the crucible of territorial pressures, and a slight
turn reveals anew its origins: anger, hatred, fear, love, pain,
familial angst, and regret. Oh, how I admire it.