Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Canada
Born in Egypt to Armenian parents and raised in Victoria,
British Columbia, Atom Egoyan began making short films
while a student at the University of Toronto. Along with
his fellow Torontonian David Cronenberg, Egoyan has
emerged as an internationally successful auteur. He has
won numerous awards, including four at the prestigious
Cannes Film Festival and seven at the Toronto
International Film Festival. The German director Wim
Wenders was so impressed with Egoyan’s Family Viewing
(1987) that, when awarded the Prix Alcan for Wings of
Desire at the 1987 Montreal New Cinema Festival, he
publicly turned the prize over to Egoyan.
Egoyan’s films deal with themes of alienation, ennui,
and voyeurism and the connections among them.
Communications technology such as television sets,
telephones, and video cameras often figure in Egoyan’s
imagery, while his characters, often surrounded by this
technology, are emotionally stunted and unable to
communicate meaningfully with each other. In Speaking
Parts (1989), Egoyan envisions a video mausoleum where
television monitors showing footage of departed loved
ones help people cope with their grief; Exotica (1991)
creates a dance club that establishes an enveloping
environment in which men stave off loneliness. The
cultural estrangement that appears in Egoyan’s films is in
part attributable to his being relocated as a child to
Canada. Commonly considered a quintessential
postmodern filmmaker whose work shows how massmediated
simulacra have dulled our response to the real
world, Egoyan’s mise-en-scène also is often very formally
composed, suggestive of the closed, cold world that his
protagonists inhabit.
Next of Kin (1984), Egoyan’s first feature, premiered
at the high-profile Toronto International Film Festival,
where it was well received critically, as were his subsequent
films in the 1990s. The Sweet Hereafter (1997), based on
Russell Banks’s novel, marked Egoyan’s first screenplay
based on someone else’s work and his rise to widespread
horror movies to internationally acclaimed art films, was
the inspiration for many of these other directors. After
Cronenberg, Rozema gained international recognition
ATOM EGOYAN
b. Cairo, Egypt, 19 July 1960
international attention. Since then, however, Egoyan’s
career has wavered. Ararat (2002), ostensibly about the
1915 Armenian genocide by Turks (which the Turks have
long disputed), is a bold reflexive examination of the
representation of history in cinema that introduces a new
political dimension into Egoyan’s work. But Felicia’s
Journey (1999) was neither a notable box-office nor critical
success, and Where the Truth Lies (2005), a high-concept
film about a mysterious murder involving a comedy duo
resembling Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, elicited strong
negative reaction when it premiered along with
Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, which critics
embraced, at the 2005 Toronto International Film
Festival.
Egoyan also has produced several films by other
directors and directed several episodes for such television
shows as The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
as well as a highly regarded made-for-TV movie, Gross
Misconduct (1993), about the troubled life of the hockey
player Brian Spencer.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Next of Kin (1984), Family Viewing (1987), Speaking Parts
(1989), The Adjuster (1991), Exotica (1994), The Sweet
Hereafter (1997), Ararat (2002)
FURTHER READING
Desbarats, Carole, Jacinto Lageira, Daniele Riviere, and Paul
Virilio, eds. Atom Egoyan. Translated from the French by
Brian Holmes. Paris: Editions Dis Voir, 1993.
Egoyan, Atom, and Ian Balfour, eds. Subtitles: On the
Foreignness of Film. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
Falsetto, Mario. Personal Visions: Conversations with
Contemporary Film Directors. Los Angeles: Silman-James
Press, 2000.
Leach, Jim. Film in Canada. Don Mills, Ontario, Canada:
Oxford University Press, 2006.
Tasker, Yvonne, ed. Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers. London
and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Barry Keith Grant
with I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), a comedy
about a nerdy young woman, which became a surprise hit
at both the Cannes and Toronto film festivals. Atom
214 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM