Adoration explores the nature of terrorism and martyrdom

In his 12th feature film, Adoration, Canadian director Atom Egoyan veers  off into the harsh terrain of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Rachel (Rachel Blanchard) and Sami (Noam Jenkins) in their bedroom. (video)

Scheduled to open in Toronto on May 8, Adoration is Egoyan’s first overtly political movie since Ararat, which turned on the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Adoration is based on a terrorist incident in April 1986 in which a Jordanian national of Palestinian origin, Nizar Hindawi, attempted to plant Semtex plastic explosives aboard an El Al plane en route from London to Tel Aviv.

Hindawi, who had ties with Syria’s intelligence services, placed the bomb in the handbag of one of the passengers, Ann-Marie Murphy, his pregnant Irish girlfriend.

A simple, apolitical person, she had no idea that she was cynically being used as a pawn in a deadly struggle. If Murphy had made it past security guards, Hindawi would have detonated the bomb, killing some 400 people.

This is Egoyan’s point of departure.  In a series of scenes that frame Adoration, the Irish woman, known here as Rachel (Rachel Blanchard), faces an Israeli guard as she tries to board flight 016. In a thick Israeli accent, he asks her a number of routine questions. Her answers set off alarm bells, and she is not permitted to get on the aircraft.

Fast forwarding, Egoyan focuses on Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), a tormented Toronto high school French teacher from Lebanon who gives her students a translation exercise on the Hindawi affair.

Much to Sabine’s consternation, the assignment has an unsettling effect on one student, Simon (Devon Bostick), an orphan who pretends to be the son of the Irish woman, and on her career.

Simon reads his essay in class and then posts it on the Internet. The reaction triggers an emotional debate on chat lines: is Hindawi a monster or a hero?

After a Holocaust survivor condemns Hindawi, a neo-Nazi praises him as a hero. Their respective opinions symbolize the gamut of views on this explosive issue.

At once dark and mysterious, and distinguished by understated performances, Adoration shifts between the terrorist incident and its unforeseen repercussions in Toronto two decades later.

Egoyan’s film, which is typically  opaque and detached, explores interlocking themes ranging from the complexities of convoluted relationships to the nature of terrorism, martyrdom, victimhood, western penetration of Muslim lands, Islamic extremism and modern technology.

In touching on these diverse but connected topics, Egoyan adopts a cool, neutral tone, refraining from declaring his own sympathies.

His neutrality may be disturbing to some viewers, but it heightens tensions and endows Adoration with a certain edge.