How to Dismantle An Atom Bomb: Atom Egoyan's 'Where The Truth Lies'

How to Dismantle An Atom Bomb

Those of you who actually read the bottom right corner of page 16 of the Arts & Entertainment section of your local rag sheet are probably aware that the forthcoming film "Where the Truth Lies" by Canadian director Atom EBoreYan (or Egoyan as he's known when the grants and hosannas pour in from the pigs-at-the-trough Canadian arts industry) is going to have the dreaded NC-17 rating in the United States.

As the story goes, the rating was applied because of a guy-on-guy-on-girl menage a trios sequence that occurs in the last quarter of the film (if the audience can stay awake long enough for it.) Personally, while I've never been the greatest fan of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) who applies the ratings system - the system that says graphic sex is pornographic unless three quarts of blood and pieces of brain splatter the sheets in which case you merit no worse than a "R" - but they've really done society a favor here. Yes, "Where the Truth Lies" will be shown in very few theatres because of the NC-17 but moviegoers have just been spared countless dollars that would have been wasted on tickets and popcorn to see EBoreYan's newest worthless pile of trash. Mind you, if you want to see Alison Lohman put on the most laughably ridiculous attempt at playing an author-cum-detective since Katie Holmes thought she could sell herself as a District Attorney in "Batman Begins", you're in for a real treat.

But I want to talk about the director. Atom Egoyan is the symbol of everything that is wrong with the English Canadian film industry. He is nothing but a fringe hack that would be stuck putting on stage plays at the local barn in rural Gdansk were it not for the fact that he's spent about 15 years shamelessly convincing (if not Monica Lowinsky-ing) the right denizens of "Canadian culture" that he's some kind of "auteur". In reality, any mention of that kind of link should have Francois Truffaut twisting another 65 degrees in his grave although if Truffaut has any way of reading the English Canadian press, he's probably twisted himself so much that his torso snapped off in 1999. Yet, he's got countless Canadian film agencies always ready to break the piggy bank (translation - Canadian taxpayer dollars) for his next vanity exercise even though there's no visible evidence that he's ever been box office viable. Come to think of it, he's not really artistically viable either - I doubt 9 out of 10 Canadians know what the heck a "Genie" is albeit he has seven of those at last count (probably because he knows about how to release Canadian films in years when the English product is pretty darn poor even for it.)

This time, and maybe because he's realizing that the trough could empty once the right bureaucrat catches on to this hustle, Egoyan tag-teamed with another big Canadian sycophant - producer Robert Lantos - to con tax dollars for something "more commercial" and with bigger international talents like Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth (as opposed to Mia Kershner and Bruce Greenwood.) Alas, he didn't forget, humble as he is, to find a role for his no-talent "actress" wife and the new Marilyn Lightstone of Canadian cinema, Arsenic Carcinogen (Oops. Arsinee Khanjian.) Yet the end result is typical Egoyan - a confusing, meandering mess where characters are transformed into caricatures and you wonder what the whole point was in the first place.

However, his name alone is good enough that "Truth" joins a series of his works that merited play at the Cannes and Toronto International Film Festivals. He's also shamelessly propped up in the English Canadian press as a symbol of Canadian ethnic diversity given his Armenian background (but let's keep it a secret that he was born in Egypt, okay?) The new film was bad enough. I actually caught a re-screening of it at the Toronto Film Festival and had to endure about ten minutes of torture while head programmer-in-waiting Noah Cowan droned on about how legendary Egoyan is following by the director doing a symbolic "I'm not worthy" bow back to the festival for putting his film in (although I'm sure that Egoyan's part as a member of the Artists' Committee and Lantos' as a member of the Board of Directors had absolutely nothing to do with it.)

Maybe I'll put on my artistic hat here. The three-way? Bacon's character metaphorically represents the Canadian taxpayer while Firth symbolizes the people behind "Where the Truth Lies" and what they really think of their financiers. Whether you think that's worth 10 bucks or more a ticket plus concessions is entirely up to you. Me? If I even think of walking into an Egoyan film again, I think I'll arrange for a sumo wrestler to stomp my testicles at least six times in rapid succession (or at least until my senses return.)

Where The Truth Lies [iFilm Movie Trailer]
Bacon, Firth defend sexy Egoyan film [Canoe]
Egoyan film explores divide between fame and privacy [CTV/CP]

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