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Adoration: 72 virgins and one lie
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The past and the present co-exist in Atom Egoyan’s Adoration, which imagines that an unwitting suicide bomber and her secretive husband are the parents of Canadian teenage boy. But to peg it simply as an examination of fanaticism wouldn’t be doing the movie – or Mr. Egoyan - justice. With a pace akin to poetry he introduces us to the quietly feuding members of a family, letting us come to our own conclusions. There are few outbursts, and no violence, and the movie’s most haunting image is one of absolute stillness: a woman in a glittering hijab stands on a street where “normal” people live.
After Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), a French teacher, reads an article about a pregnant young woman who didn’t know her terrorist boyfriend planned to have her board a large aircraft with a bomb in her purse, she convinces teenaged Simon (Devon Bostick) - himself the orphaned son of a white woman and Muslim man - to tell his classmates he is the child who wouldn’t have been born had the bomb not been found. Simon’s classmates believe him, and when his fictional heritage is posted on the internet it provokes an intense school-wide debate.
Meanwhile, Simon’s uncle (Scott Speedman), who gave up his twenties to take care of Simon, serves as reluctant host to the mysterious Muslim woman that snoops around their house; meanwhile Simon’s dying grandfather rails against his evil son-in-law; meanwhile mom and dad, played hauntingly yet humanly by Noam Jenkins and Rachel Blanchard, enact the ruse of the airplane couple; meanwhile the internet debate spreads to include passengers on the near-fatal flight, holocaust survivors, holocaust deniers, and a young man who understands why Simon’s “dad” might have felt he was sending his wife and child to live in heaven with 72 virgins.
While the earnest anger that boils over in the chat rooms is to be expected, the way it is presented is not. In the process of shooting Adoration Egoyan filmed real kids, choosing the most persuasive arguments from all sides of the spectrum, and the result is spontaneous and sometimes shocking. But I don’t think that’s necessarily the point of the film, which is ultimately more about the bond of the title – the importance, for instance, of Simon’s mother’s violin – than about another exercise in rehashing the boundaries of tolerance and hate.
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