Life seen at the sub-Atomic level

May 29, 7:22 PMPhiladelphia Movie ExaminerWilliam Sternman

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Atom Egoyan’s latest cinematic conundrum, Adoration, brings to mind Winston Churchill’s famous 1939 description of the Soviet Union as a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Another Russian allusion is also apropos: the Matryoshka doll, a series of increasingly smaller hollow dolls nested one within the other. When you open one, you see the next one inside. Finally, when you open the last one, you discover it is empty.

I really can't write too much about director/writer Egoyan's plot because just about anything I say will give it away. (To tell you the truth, I wish I had been able to give it away long before I ever sat down to watch it.)

Even this may be too much: everything you assume to be true isn't. There are enough red herrings here to start your own fish market. (Am I saying there's something fishy here? You be the judge.)

The main character, Simon (Devon Bostick), a high- school student, concocts a story for his French class about a terrorist's plan to blow up an airplane by using his pregnant wife as an unwitting bomb carrier. There are endless irrelevant discussions of this non-event (or is it?) through teleconferencing with strangers. If I'd wanted a debate, I'd've read the Lincoln-Douglas set-to. Unlike that historical dust-up, these debaters are just plain boring; some don't even stick to the subject (who could blame them?); and at least one seemed comatose.

Egoyan's obsession with modern technology starts the movie. Simon, apparently, is unable to visit his sick grandfather (Kenneth Welsh) in the hospital without recording their interview. Even more than even the teleconferencing, Simon's hand-held camera, which he is constantly monitoring, puts a distracting wall between the boy and his grandfather—and us.

At the sub-atomic level (as well as the sub-Atomic one), the uncertainty principle kicks in. I couldn't be sure of anything until the very end. The gratuitous coincidences that supposedly resolve our doubts about the characters' motivations added to my confusion.

If the plot had been told in chronological order, without the red herrings and electronic distractions, it wouldn't have made sense. Egoyan keeps us watching by withholding information until the conclusion. This is a time-tested literary trick—we all want to know what happens next—but the danger is that when we find out, we may be not only disappointed but feel cheated.

Adoration is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that takes 100 minutes to assemble. Each piece suggests a different final picture, but you don’t see the whole until the very last piece is put into place. And then you wonder why you even bothered in the first place.