Well here’s a surprise — a new entry in Film Klub! It’s been almost a two year gap since the last entry here, and all that time there has been intentions of adding more films to share here but it all comes down to time, energy and the thoughts to fill out the writing. I’ve been watching films as always and probably have watched a frightening amount over the years. The choice of what I can wax on about here is a massively intimidating selection. Where do I pick things up again out of the literally thousands of films I’ve watched?
In order to write these entries to the standard I’d like a film really needs to linger on my mind for a while for my observations on it to coalesce into something that someone else might find insight in reading. There’s also the fact that my writing energy over the last year or so has been actively been diverted into the Track Of The Day section of this website, where I’m putting down my thoughts on tracks by musical artists that have crossed my ears, and frankly I’m finding my mind is far more lined up for writing about that subject matter these days.
Coming into this new year in a period where the days are short, the temperature — at least here in Glasgow — has been rather frosty and the days following the celebrations for the new year allowed for a considerable time to spend diving into the filmography of auteur director Atom Egoyan, a Canadian director who was born in Egypt to Armenian parents whose whole family moved to Victoria, British Columbia when he was at a very young age. Egoyan would enter into writing and directing films in the early/mid 1980s as part of a loose group of Toronto-based directors at the time labelled under the Toronto New Wave, which also included such directors as Bruce McDonald (1989’s Roadkill and 1996’s “punk” road movie Hard Core Logo) and Don McKellar (most known for 1998’s apocalyptic comedy Last Night, and also one of my favourite Canadian actors/comedians).
Toronto also happens to be the home of another internationally known director, that being David Cronenberg (who also has a small acting role in the aforementioned Last Night) and his well known filmography that pioneered the body horror genre with films such as Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988), as well as numerous films before these classics and countless others since. Cronenberg is a director for which Egoyan‘s earlier films would have coincidental stylistic and subjectual similarities to the former’s work in the 80s to but more on that as this entry gets on.
Being a Canadian myself, I have obviously been aware of Egoyan’s work for a long time. His 1994 film Exotica was his breakout smash hit that was everywhere in Canadian media at the time of its release. I watched it around this time, but probably wasn’t really “getting it” being a teenager whose interests were somewhere else (music) and likely didn’t have the patience to watch what on the surface seemed to be a film about a high-end strip club. Again, there’ll be more on this as we get along.
Fast forward a decade or two later I had come across Egoyan’s film preceding Exotica, and that being the 1991 film The Adjuster, starring classic Canadian actors from that period in time including Elias Koteas, Arsinée Khanjian (who also also of Armenian heritage and is married to Egoyan and involved in many of his films — acting and otherwise), Maury Chaykin, Gabrielle Rose , as well as the already mentioned Don McKellar. Upon this first watch I noted the slow burning atmosphere of this film, but again I wasn’t really paying attention as it’s a film that needs one’s dedicated focus to better understand the strange and cryptic plot and to pick up all of the clues that are contained within the film. If anything, in this most recent watch I picked up a vibe and feeling that I got from such David Lynch classics such as 1997’s Lost Highway and 2001’s classic Mulholland Drive.
It’s here that I feel a bit reserved using the Lynch comparison, but it’s going to come up at least a few times in this entry. If anything that parallel is being used to pull attention to this film for those unfamiliar with it, using a director who people know far better as a general resemblance. A lot of folks I know socially and within the music scenes I’m involved with tend to be avid fans of Lynch‘s work , as well as those who happen to be reading here. There have been conversations in the past with folks about being thirsty for more films in a Lynchian style. As Lynch’s filmography tend to be actually shorter than many other directors, there’s only so many times those films can be watched for that “fix”. There are others out there — unique works in their own right with a singular vision to that director — and for me this is one reason for writing this.
Where Egoyan’s key films from the eighties such as 1987’s Family Viewing and 1989’s Speaking Parts (both definitely worth checking out) has some crossover to Cronenberg‘s work to this time — such the use of video/VHS, technological alienation, an underlying creeping dread, haunting and unsettling imagery as well as a general Canadian-ness that’s hard to explain — The Adjuster for me more so definitely has some unintentional crossover to the dark, surreal and disconnected feeling inherent in Lynch‘s works from that general period.
A notable feature unique to Egoyan’s work — especially from this period — is how Egoyan withholds details from the viewer at the start of the film, often featuring situations of unrelated characters that seem banal or don’t connect initially, but as the films progress the pieces of how everything connects — characters, plotlines, etc. — start to become more clear and often with a mind-boggling revelatory effect. In addition to this, many of his films tend to work in non-linear editing, moving back and forth in the chronological timeline as the connections are revealed to the viewer to heighten the emotional impact of these revelations.
These unique traits are definitely used masterfully in The Adjuster, which from the start presents the viewer with what we see as a married couple at night. Noah Render, the husband of this couple played by Elias Koteas, receives a phone call from a client at night, prompting him to get in his car to the scene of a house fire. It’s here we find out that he is an insurance adjuster, the type that assists those whose homes and belonging have been devastated by a house fire — consoling the victims and comforting them with assurance that their loss will be compensated by the security of the insurance policies they have been taken out. A number of scenes in the earlier parts of the film he him wandering through fire-ravaged shells of house with the victims, with Noah encouraging the victims to provide an itemised list of contents and their value, as well as offering the victims temporary accommodation in a room in a local motel he uses to provide these necessities to his clients.
His wife Hera, played by Arsinée Khanjian, is first seen lying in bed at night, then on a subway to sit down in a small, darkened cinema where although the audience can’t see what she’s watching — they can hear sounds of what seems to be a raunchy pornographic (or even snuff?) film. At this point we don’t really know what she’s doing but soon enough the audience finds out she’s working as a film censor.
Being a film that’s more economical on dialogue than most, as the storyline progresses we find the Renders living in one of several houses — most seemingly unfinished — in an incomplete suburban housing development with the houses themselves surrounded by an expanse of flattened dirt. This landscape is accented by billboards advertising the development, all done in an illustrative style that might have been more common in the mid-20th century.
Living with Noah and Hera is their son and Hera’s sister, the latter who spends her days burning up photos and memoirs of what seems to be her old life in Armenia (“She doesn’t like to save things.”), as well as spending the evenings watching porn films that Hera secretly films at her job. It’s revealed she’s doing this as unlike her sister, Hera went to school and got a job and education and her sister wanted to share what her sister does and to take pride in her “work”.
We also find that as Noah puts up clients whose homes have been devastated in his motel of choice, going beyond the call of duty and constantly visiting and consoling his clients, we also find out that he’s sleeping with with his clients which is where Noah’s facade of doing his work with good intentions starts to reveal ulterior motives. His initial warmth — which much like the overall vibe of the film’s characters lacks a certain humanity — starts to seem more dishonest, with Noah even repeating the same lines from some internal script in head with each client he visits, telling them phrases like, “You may not feel it, but you’re in a state of shock,” seeming to be something he says over and over to all of his, um, clients.
Mixing up into this main narrative is another plotline, involving a mysterious wealthy couple called Bubba (Maury Chaykin) and Mimi (Gabrielle Rose). Their motives and background in this film are far more surreal, obscure and more difficult to read. We are first introduced to them early in the film as Hera rides the subway to work, where she observes a disheveled homeless man coughing and doubling over in the subway as a well dressed woman in a red skirt and suit sits beside this man and proceeds to guide his hand in between her legs as she looks at Hera — a stranger at this point — in excitement. The scene cuts to this strange couple getting out of a fancy car in front of a rather stately home and walking hand in hand up to the house.
Questions here are posed as to what’s going on here and further scenes of these two — Bubba and Mimi — give the viewer very little direct insight to their involvement in the story early on. What a viewer might get out of it is that the two are a bored, wealthy couple that engage in elaborate sexual scenarios egged on by Mimi, but that possibility is never disclosed on screen and it’s sort of up to the viewer to make that connection. In each scene we see her she seems to be engaged in some sort of cosplay — a 1920s flapper starlet, a curly haired cheerleader that stages an elaborate sexual game with football players on a field, a small child riding around the mansion on a tricycle, and so on. Egoyan, who is known for his erotic subject matter of the sercret and simmering sexual desire of some of his characters, really adds this dark and alluring element to the story by way of these two characters.
The two couples — or storylines — gradually intersect as Bubba scouts out the unfinished housing development the Renders live on and starts taking photos, eventually introducing himself to the family as a film producer who wishes to “rent out” their house for a location for a film he’s making. The Renders agree and for the last third of the film and its conclusion, this agreement unravels into a bizarre and surreal climax. I could elaborate more on this here, but that would spoil the mystery of going out and watching the film for yourself.
With the basic plot outline there, one obvious thing that was noted was the stilted interactions between the characters, who seem to be somewhat devoid of everyday humanity and more ghosts, or ciphers. This was very likely intentional for the film’s themes and mood.
In the opening scene taking place at night at the house that Noah and Hera live in, this detachment is obvious when Noah takes the call and sets off to see the damage of his first client he goes to see in the film. Rather than Noah telling Hera he’s off to another job while they’re both still in bed, he opts to call here shortly after his departure in his car from his carphone (yes, it was still those days) to tell her what’s going on in what seems to be two one-way conversations that ends rather abruptly. Throughout the film the interactions between the main characters are deadpan, unusual and lacking what most of us would consider normal human interaction.
Another notable scene that plays up this feeling of detachment is the rather bizarre conversation that Noah and Hera have with Bubba when he visits them to propose his plan for renting the house. When the couple ask Bubba about the film and why he chose the house, his answers are jagged and obtuse, often with long gaps between words in his sentences as he struggles to formulate an answer. Hera asks, “Does that [the house] suit the character of your film?”, to which Bubba’s response is fractured and shadowy. Is the character that he talks about the one from the film, or he himself?
This sense of detachment in the characters for me really parallels the acting style of the later films of the already mentioned David Lynch, and if anything has given The Adjuster numerous Lynch comparisons along with the general mood of the film.
Strangely enough I’ve seen the film labelled as a comedy/drama and I suppose that’s apt to some degree as there are comedic elements within the film, although more subtle and less obvious than Lynch‘s trademark quirky, off-beat humour that that director is well known for. The humour of Egoyan does come through, even with some of the one-liners of the film’s characters, the contradiction of the film’s brooding nature and simply the absurdity of the situations that are presented in The Adjuster.
Another key similarity in this film to Lynch‘s work mentioned here is the moody and sombre score by Mychael Danna, who has provided the music for the majority of Egoyan’s films in the same way Angelo Baladamenti regularly collaborated on Lynch films. The tone of Denna’s work here has a mysterious, slow and sinister tone which is augmented by instrumentation from eastern styles of music which is a common element in Denna’s scores — perhaps a direction with input by Egoyan based on his Armenian heritage. The use of murky strings — whether they be done on synths or actual classical stringed instruments — have that dark ambient quality to Baladamenti’s string compositions, with Danna’s score here punctuated by the occasional and odd sounding minimal piano chords as well as more ethnic instruments that started to come into the fore in the 1990s (I’ve mentioned this before in a Track Of The Day feature regarding the work of Dead Can Dance).
There are some other details I’ve noticed in my most recent watch of The Adjuster that with a more focused watch I hadn’t noticed before — and again have a strange similarity to Lynch as well in that director’s use of subtle objects and set design for symbolism. These would be some re-occuring minor details that likely have some meaning that I haven’t entirely picked up on yet.
The first is that there’s an extensive use of green and red in the film. The hotel Noah puts up his clients in has a retro mid-20th century green and red colour scheme. The arrows that Noah shoots from his bow and arrow to pass away the time at home have green and red flights. The matches we see Bubba with later in the film are green and red. It could be coincidental but it struck me when I noticed it.
There’s later scenes in the film where Noah is watching TV late at night that mirror some of characteristics of Bubba in the film. One such clip appears to from a TV movie where a man politely asks to take an unknown woman’s picture, and another clip of what appears to be a low budget shopping channel featuring exotic, Eastern carved masks, including one of “diablo”. Getting into more detail on how they connect to Bubba would give away crucial reveals to the film’s plot but these two details for me only heightened the strange mystery of The Adjuster. It’s probably one of those films that you could pull out more and more revealing details on each re-watch.
And, like many auteur directors — mentioned here or otherwise — Egoyan films tends to work with the same acting talent on his films, especially in his earlier days as a more local (meaning Canada) director, often pulling in Arsinée Khanjian, Maury Chaykin, Michael Hemblen, Elias Koteas, Don McKellar and Gabrielle Rose into the casts of his films. This would continue even as he became a “Hollywood” director, even if his regulars from the early days had smaller parts.
If you’ve read this far and are intrigued not only to watch The Adjuster but other similar Egoyan films to scratch that itch, I’d personally recommend his two preceding films — already mentioned earlier — which include Family Viewing (1987) and Speaking Parts (1989). As these are what would be considered “early” films by the director, they have more of an indie/arthouse feel that more appeals to my tastes. The links provided for these two are for rental of the films on YouTube here in the UK. This availability may differ in whatever country you live in.
After my most recent watch of The Adjuster, I opted to give Exotica another watch, having not seen it since it came out in the 1990s. As mentioned earlier it was the film that put is name on “the map”. I have to say that with that watch all of these years later, that despite seeing why it was a breakout hit for Egoyan, I couldn’t really get into it as much. There’s a few reasons for this — perhaps one being that as it’s set in a strip club for the most part, the club itself seems to unbelievable (as is in many larger budget films) and given my sense of humour, a bit laughable to watch. There’s a lot of 90s aesthetics going on in this film that I didn’t like even in the 90s — certain aspects of fashion and decor of the time; the garish music comprising a mix of techno, trip hop and “ethnic” elements being played at the club; the colour grading; the actual dancing in the club; Elias Koteas‘s somewhat cringy monologues and introductions he announces through a microphone to the patrons of the club through his role as a DJ/MC… I don’t know.
Although based on a devasting story about a large group of children from a small town who die in a bus crash, his 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter was solid, despite seeing Egoyan reaching out further into the realms of mainstream Hollywood. Watching further films he had done in the 2000s, including Where The Truth Lies (2005) and Chloe (2009) that feature big name American actors such as Kevin Bacon and Julianne Moore, they seem like solid Hollywood films for a general movie-watching public but for me it would seem Egoyan got dissolved and assimilated into the Hollywood system (or perhaps he opted to do so) and found myself losing interest. Chloe to me in this day and age seems like an average, modern thriller made by the BBC that would appear on the iPlayer but perhaps back in 2009 came across as a bit more edgy.
Visually there’s nothing really bold and enticing with these films as far as my tastes go, and Egoyan’s early and unique trademark of non-linear narratives seem more lost in these later efforts, especially by this point as many other Hollywood directors would also pick up this non-linear narrative style to their own films — Christopher Nolan taking that to the extreme.
Perhaps this is one point where Egoyan differs from Cronenberg and Lynch with the latter two continuing to make relatively uncompromising films throughout the bulk of their career that retained their unique style and vision while Egoyan sort of just blended in the magnolia walls of Hollywood. I guess a lot of artists can’t continue to retain the adventurous quirks of their earlier work forever as they get funneled more and more into a mainstream big studio system. Having said that apparently he’s a director that actors love to work with, still commands an audience and to this day still has relevance.
As a final note, I did a lot of reading about this and other Egoyan films while writing this, and this article below from Film Inquiry being of particular interest.
The Adjuster is currently available on the Criterion Channel at the time of publishing this entry, but also major streaming platforms such as Apple and YouTube (links provided are for UK-based viewers). You can also find it new or used on DVD/Bluray and this will depend on where you live and what purchase options are available based on that.
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