There is always a risk with having such a singular focus on a single theme; you might wake up to find the walls of that favored niche are closing in on you. And that is where we find Egoyan in Adoration.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Moody, provocative and intellectually ambitious, Adoration is primed to elicit impassioned discussion among audiences.
This ambitious think-piece ultimately smothers its good intentions in didactic revelations, earnest pleading and incessant violin music. Engrossing nonetheless, the story of a high schooler troubled by his parents' legacy reps one of the Canadian writer-director's most accessible efforts.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
Though there are moments when the drama turns into intellectual debate, the film is also emotional, moving with a fluid, mounting tension and moments of anguish and strange, startling humour.
Adoration, which hinges on a number of coincidences, contains some really fine performances.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The upshot is that those who appear to be guilty may not be -- a muddled message for our time.
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
Shot on beautifully utilized film but employing images vividly from the Internet and mobile phones, it's an examination of the power that false ideas may have on people's imagination and beliefs when they are repeated over and over.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
A profound and provocative exploration of cultural inheritance, communications technology and the roots and morality of terrorism, the Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan nimbly wades into an ideological minefield without detonating an explosion.
Watching Adoration is like juggling three tennis balls, a porcupine, and a graduate thesis, but eventually it finds a unifying theme, that of tolerance melting away racial and intergenerational hatreds.