The Brand of the Past, or the Traumatic Identity in Atom Egoyan’s “Adoration”
Abstract
Adoration (2008) sums up many of the themes present in Egoyan’s earlier work. We find here transformed and re-contextualized themes of family breakdown, death of a close person and identity crisis. The film lacks temporal and space continuity, and elliptic editing is applied, which makes it difficult to order the events chronologically. From the very beginning the present is connected with the past, and the director purposefully misleads the viewer, laying false trails, and referring the viewer to absent elements, to events from the past. Loska notes that the narrative structure of Adoration is based on association, and not on cause and effect, as it is built upon associating apparently unconnected elements. The storyline consists of several narrative streams and numerous ellipses and repetitions that lead to mutually exclusive versions of events. Loska presents these elements of the narrative in detail, and concludes that the trauma experienced by the main character cannot be shown directly or presented within the framework of a linear storyline, as the traumatic experience is beyond rationalization and ordering.
Keywords:
Atom Egoyan, narrative, trauma, identityReferences
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Authors
Krzysztof Loskakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Profesor UJ; zajmuje się kulturą popularną, postmodernizmem, literaturą współczesną i kinem gatunkowym. Autor m.in. Dziedzictwa McLuhana. Między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością (2001), Encyklopedii filmu science fiction (2004), Tożsamości i mediów (2006). Współautor (z Andrzejem Pitrusem) książek: 100 filmów science fiction (2000) i David Cronenberg: rozpad ciała, rozpad gatunku (2003).
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