Atom Egoyan is like
Dario Argento in at least one key aspect: he really seems to have lost his touch, and his modern films fall embarrassingly short of his earlier, celebrated work. Has he really lost his touch, or maybe looking back, is it that his older material isn't quite as flawless as we held it up to be? Maybe it's some of both, though I've been revisiting everything, from his earliest to his latest, and there definitely is a clear drop off, at least in the writing, if not the directorial craft. Even his latest, 2019's
Guest of Honour, which some critics have heralded as a return to form, asks us to accept the premise that a young school teacher falsely accused of having an affair with her teenage students, would fake it (going to the students' hotel room at night and making loud sex noises) just to toy with her accuser. It's that weirdly self-serious mixture of lurid sex (I think male boomer filmmakers have made more films about teachers falsely accused of affairs with their students than actually taking advantage) and absurdity that gives his work that embarrassing cringy air. I mean, that had me scoffing at the screen, but it was an admittedly strong improvement over the stuff of
Chloe or the nearly unwatchable
Where the Truth Lies. This brought us back to just mild,
Adoration levels of goofiness, so maybe there's hope for him yet. Just like Argento managed to pull off at least a competent, halfway return to form with
Dark Glasses. He hasn't recaptured the magic of
Suspiria, but he's getting there.
And to be fair, most of these issues do bubble up even in the early
work, just to less disastrous effect. I'm relieved to report that these movies do largely hold up and
are still worth having in your collection. Most of
the early films were previously released on DVD
by Zeitgeist Films in 2001, as their
"The Essential Egoyan" line. And most of them still have only
been released on blu by Artificial Eye in the UK, first as an individual
discs in
2013, which were then grouped together into this 2014 boxed set. But of
course, we'll also cover the more recent and better known features
that've had releases on more major labels. Except, that is, for 1994's
Exotica, which I've already given its own page, including its disc in this set, the old Miramax DVD and the competing blu from Alliance.
Update 9/26/22: Criterion just released a new 4k restoration of
Exotica on DVD and BD. That's going to be covered on
our separate Exotica page. But, that release also includes
Calendar and two short Egoyan films from this set as extras. All of those are now examined below.
We start with Egoyan's first full-length feature, 1984's
Next of Kin (released by Zeitgeist as a 2-DVD set with
Family Viewing, which we'll be coming to next).
Peter is a 23 year-old who's dragged to a modern sort of video-tape
based family therapy by his parents because he's unmotivated and likes
to pretend. Peter soon pretends to be a doctor at this clinic and watch
some of the video-tapes of other families, in particular an Armenian
couple and then insert himself into their lives by pretending to be
their long-lost son. Soon he meets his estranged "sister" played of
course by Egoyan's wife
Arsinée Khanjian, and finally finds
purpose in trying to restore her relationship with her parents, by
teaching her some of his dissociative techniques. Egoyan plays with
cinematic techniques in ways fans should expect: what first plays like
opening narration turns out to be a recording from the story, and
there's a lot about reflecting on one's life through recorded video.
But it's told in more of a straight-forward manner than most of his
work. It's certainly weird, but never alienating, and a bemusing if
never truly involving social experiment. In other words, it's no
masterpiece but certainly worth a watch.
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| 2001 Zeitgeist DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
It looks like a thin layer of wax paper was covering the DVD image and removed for the blu. The framing and aspect ratio are adjusted from 1.31:1 to 1.37:1, and a soft murkiness of compression is replaced with sharp, grain-infused HD clarity. What you're going to see again and again in these comparisons isn't the same master just benefiting from the extra resolution of an HD disc, but all new, far superior remasters. These are very satisfying upgrades.
On the other hand, the back of the blu-ray case mentions LPCM audio, but in fact both discs only offer lossy Dolby stereo tracks, and only the DVD includes optional English
subtitles. So it's not all forward momentum.
And speaking of not winning them all, the blu-ray is
barebones, an especially disappointing fact considering the DVD was a
bit of a special edition. This, like the lossy audio, is going to be a running
theme through this set. Anyway, the DVD had an excellent commentary by
Egoyan, who's quite a good commentator, roughly thirteen
minutes of rehearsal footage with the cast, and a photo gallery. No fan would want to miss these, but Artificial Eye hasn't got 'em.
Family Viewing
takes some of what Egoyan was playing with in the last film even
further, depicting our characters on television screens or as surveilled
through security cameras. Half of this movie is shot on 1" tape, and
other on 16mm film. Very early on, a character uses a remote to rewind a
scene he's in, a la
Funny Games.
The plot follows a young man who fakes his grandmother's death to move
his cold father (there's a great scene where he visits the wrong woman
at the nursing home), who's recording over all their old family videos
to make sex tapes with his girlfriend. Khanjian is back, this time as a
phone sex operator (naturally, as Egoyan's most common recurring theme
seems to be sex work), and we're introduced to a couple other actors who
would become regular members of his troupe:
David Hemblen and
Gabrielle Rose. The young lead is
Aiden Tierney, who has no other credits to his name, but is the younger brother of
Patrick Tierney, who was Peter in
Next of Kin and has a brief appearance in our next feature,
Speaking Parts.
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| 2001 Zeitgeist DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
The fullscreen framing is pretty close on this one, just shifting from 1.30:1 to 1.32:1. But the actual PQ is markedly improved. There's all kinds of compression noise on the DVD, which is also overly blue. The BD is a much clearer and film-like. The boost to HD is especially important because the image being crushed down to murky SD helped to obscure the distinction between video formats, which you're supposed to notice as part of the storytelling - a point Egoyan expressly makes in the commentary. He's frustrated by the DVD he's watching; I think he'd be relieved by this blu.
Once
again, both discs only offer loss Dolby stereo tracks, despite the
blu-ray case claiming LPCM, and only the DVD includes optional English
subtitles. Also again, the DVD had a great commentary by Egoyan, who
explicates on the themes and ideas behind the movie, and gets into all
the reasoning behind his creative technical decisions. It also has
another 13 minutes of rehearsal footage, and a photo gallery, none of
which are on the blu. Plus, there are three of Egoyan's earliest short
films, which, okay. Let's do the shorts now.
These shorts are Egoyan's earliest films
*: 1979's
Howard In Particular, 1981's
Peepshow and 1982's
Open House. They're also included as extras in the blu-ray box. Specifically,
Open House is on
The Sweet Hereafter and the other two are on
Calendar... just in case you're not getting the box but just picking and choosing between the individual releases.
Howard In Particular is a 13-minute student film, shot in black and white with no synced sound, where a man attends a dystopian retirement party on tape. And
Peepshow is
a quick 7 minute exercise where Egoyan experiments with placing various
color filters over the image as a man visits an "sensual" photo booth. Both are probably only of interest to
serious fans interested in tracking the director's development, though there is a crude science fiction foundation to these films that it's surprising Egoyan has yet to revisit.
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| 2001 Zeitgeist DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
The same 1.32:1 standard def master is used on the DVD and the BD,
but the blu-ray is interlaced, which the DVD isn't. So the BD is
actually the worse option for these early 16mm outings. Both discs only have lossy audio
and no subtitles, and there are no extras as these shorts essentially
are serving as extras themselves.
And here, now, is a look at the new Criterion edition from their 2022
Exotica release. As you can see, it's virtually indistinguishable from the previous two. Presumably, because it's "just an extra," they didn't feel the need to seek out or create a fresh transfer. I was hoping the audio might at least now be lossless, but no, that's the same, too.
Open House, however, actually aired on the CBC. It's
26-minutes long, in full color with naturally captured audio, and could
be described as his first "real" movie. Still a rough, early work for
sure, but one you might choose to watch not strictly as a historical
artifact. A young realtor is eager to impress a couple who are in the
market for a new a house, but it turns out he has an ulterior motive.
It's ultimately a sweet and sad little story, and maintains a degree
maturity even his most recent films would be improved by, though there's
some unfortunate, clunky humor at the start.
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| 2001 Zeitgeist DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
We're
still using the same SD master (though this time it's more like 1.31:1)
with lossy audio and no subs for both, so the two discs are virtually
identical except for the BD being interlaced. Meaning once again that
the DVD is preferable, and no, there are no extras for it. Egoyan
commentaries on these shorts would've been wonderful, but oh well.
That's it for the shorts; back to the features.
1989's
Speaking Parts
feels like the first of Egoyan's features with a commercial side. It's
still kind a weird artsy movie, but it plays more like the sort of
conventional thriller mainstream couples might've taken a shot at
renting from their local Blockbusters. It's about a handsome hotel
janitor who works on the sly as a male prostitute but wants to be an
actor. When a screenwriter is put up in the hotel, he seduces her in an
attempt to get cast in her film. Meanwhile, Khanjian works with him at
the hotel and is unaware of his illicit moonlighting, but it's only a
matter of time until she stumbles onto something because she's stalking
him. And David Hemblen is a big-shot producer whose changes to the film
could ruin things for everyone. Egoyan swims through his usual themes
of secret obsessions and video versions of ourselves. This film even
winds up inventing a prototypical version of cybersex. Overall, it's an
engrossing story, with the seedy elements never getting too goofy or
implausible.
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| 2001 Zeitgeist DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
Holy cow - what a difference! First we're going from fullscreen
(1.31) to widescreen (1.78), and while the lifted mattes of the DVD to
reveal more along the top and bottom, the widescreen reveals more along
the sides. The old DVD source is just full of so much noise and nasty
edge enhancement, which the BD sweeps away. And the color correction is
just as critical, as the DVD has gone totally pink, so seeing all the
original colors return to the image is really enlightening.
On
the other hand, the audio is lossy on both discs and only the DVD has
subtitles or extras. The DVD had another great commentary, a brief (six
minute) on-camera interview with Egoyan, several deleted scenes (a
couple with commentary) and an image gallery. So on the one hand, the
BD is a huge improvement, on the other hand it's a big step backwards.
Argh!
And
now we get to the major stuff, and out of The Essential Egoyan
collection, because now his films were mainstream enough to be released
by the major studios. 1991's
The Adjuster was put out on DVD by
MGM in 2001, but I went with the Canadian Alliance Atlantis disc because it was a
special edition and the MGM was barebones. And boy, this is a wild
one.
Elias Koteas is the titular insurance adjuster who gets way
too involved in the lives of the people whose claims he's
investigating, mostly sexually. His wife, Khanjian, is a film censor
keeping a secret from her coworkers David Hemblen and
Don McKellar:
that she's secretly videotaping the dirtiest scenes from the movies
they screen for her own illicit purposes. But that's all nothing
compared to the weirdo couple (Gabrielle Rose and another Egoyan
regular,
Maury Chaykin) they get entangled with who stage
impossibly elaborate, sometimes downright comical, scenarios to explore
their own sexual fantasies. This one's as ludicrous as Egoyan's ever
gotten, but it's so far afield, it kind of works. It's kind of
Lynchian,
and Koteas can ground anything. The soundtrack and the moody editing
go a long way, too; and the trauma of losing your home in a fire is
powerfully relatable.
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| 2001 Alliance DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
Another
massive difference, thanks as much in part to how awful the DVD is as
to the strength of the BD. The DVD is a non-anamorphic and clearly
squished 1.94:1, and cropped on the left-hand side, which the BD fixes
in an respects to 2.40:1. The DVD is also interlaced, which the BD
fixes, and covered in an orange hue, which is color corrected-away.
Both discs only over the stereo mix in a lossy track, and only the DVD
has optional subtitles (and a French dub).
And just like the
Zeitgeist disc, the DVD has a bunch of great extras not on the blu.
Egoyan does a commentary and a ten-minute interview, plus the red band
(ooh la la!) trailer's on here. And we also get one more short film,
this one called
En Passant. This one hasn't been out on blu at all... until Criterion included it as an extra on their 2022
Exotica disc.
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| 2001 Alliance DVD top; 2022 Criterion BD bottom. |
En Passant is from 1991, actually a segment from an anthology film called
Montreal Stories,
and it stars Maury Chaykin and Arsinée Khanjian. It's a bit of a silly
story about a man who only speaks in signs (not sign language, but
wordless paper signs) flying to Guess Where and taking a
guided tour on audio tape. It's gimmicky and you could easily call it
cloyingly eccentric, but it's still charming enough to carry its 13
minute runtime.
The film is presented in 1.30:1 on the DVD, which is corrected to 1.33:1 on the blu. Curiously,
The Adjuster was interlaced on the DVD, but short on the same disc is not. It's also not on the Criterion, which is technically in HD 1080p, but seems to just be upconverting the same basic transfer with the same compression artifacts and everything. But besides the slight geometry adjustment, the Criterion is a shade brighter, which might cure some very slight black crush on the DVD. There
are no subtitles except for a few French lines, which are burnt in on the DVD and optional on the BD. So that's three points in favor of the Criterion being an upgrade, but it's all so minor I doubt anyone but a hardcore videophile would ever notice or care.
The next one's interesting. On the one hand, it's pretty great and
smartly subtle. On the other hand, it's the beginning of Egoyan going
off the rails. 1993's
Calendar is essentially split into two
halves that intercut back and forth. The great part is a trip with
Egoyan and Khanjian playing almost themselves (it's not the first time
he's appeared in his own work, but it is the first time he's had a
prominent role) as a couple traveling through Armenia, photographing
their historical churches. Arsinée is really connecting with their
cultural past... and their tour guide, but for Atom it's just work.
It's all seen through Atom's lens, and the subtle disintegration of
their relationship is expertly written and performed. Also the
locations are beautiful. But then that's intercut with Atom in a later
period of time, having dinner with a series of prostitutes who he makes
reenact the same moment in his past relationship. It gets sillier and
more alienating every time they cut back and he has a new actress. The
movie is strong enough that you can get past it and accept the film on
its own terms, but looking back, it was a clear sign of everything to
come.
 |
2001 Alliance DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD mid;
2022 Criterion BD bottom. |
All three discs may be fullframe (1.31:1 on the DVD vs 1.37:1 on the BDs), but they sure don't look
alike. The BDs' color correction makes a huge difference in restoring the
realism and beauty of the image. The wider framing reveals more on the sides,
and the HD is much sharper and clearer. Not that the blus are identical. Criterion's is a tone darker, and frankly, has a worse encode, revealing more pixelation up close that the AE blu with more authentic grain.
As with all the previous comparisons, both the DVD And AE BD feature lossy stereo audio. Unfortunately, that's still true of the Criterion blu, which is a real disappointment. The Zeitgeist is still the only version that offers
subtitles, too.
The DVD also had some great exclusive extras,
including a commentary, a narrated photo gallery and an eight minute
interview, all with Egoyan. Criterion has a new interview, which is mostly just a poor substitute for the more substantial Zeitgeist features, though a decent way to get the basic story behind the film if you don't have access to the DVD; and in the last couple minutes, Egoyan gets into some specific comparisons between
Calendar and
Exotica, which are new and interesting. Anyway, the DVD also had an excellent hour-long
documentary, but that one's not so exclusive. It's on the BD set as
well.
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| 2001 Zeitgeist DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
Formulas for Seduction is essentially the only extra in the blu-ray box (on the
Exotica disc, again in case anyone's shopping for the individual releases).
It's basically one long, pretty great interview with Egoyan
interspersed with film clips. It's non-anamorphic on both discs, but
the DVD is interlaced with slightly crushed blacks, while the BD has neither of those problems, so that's one point in the
blu-rays' favor. The framing is also slightly different: 1.69:1 vs
1.73:1, but it's hard to say which is correct... probably neither.
Finally, we come to what is widely accepted as his masterpiece,
The Sweet Hereafter from 1997. A lot of the credit surely goes to the original novelist
Russell Banks,
but his writing really plays into Egoyan's strengths, and the way he
expertly constructs his story into a time-shifting screenplay has never
been more effective. He's also assembled his greatest cast, a mix of
his regulars: Arsinée Khanjian, Gabrielle Rose, David Hemblen and Maury
Chaykin, but also gets top of the line performances by great actors like
Ian Holm,
Sarah Polley and
Bruce Greenwood.
The monologue Holm delivers on the airplane alone is Oscar worthy.
Then the photography, the music... everything is operating at peak
performance, and the material, about a small town that lost almost all
of its children in a tragic school bus accident, is powerful but
unsentimental. You bet this film was too big for Zeitgeist. Instead
New Line released it on special edition DVD in the US, as part of their
Platinum Series... you know, with the
Austin Powers movies.
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| 1998 New Line DVD top; 2014 Artificial Eye BD bottom. |
New
Line's DVD slightly windowboxed, but otherwise anamorphic at 2.35:1.
Still the blu-ray is clearly taken from a new scan, now framed at
2.40:1. It's noticeably brighter and definitely clearer, not least
because this disc has some rough compression. It is a pretty old DVD,
after all. So it's another essential upgrade.
And here's the
pleasant surprise - the blu-ray audio is actually lossless! There are
actually two tracks, a lossy stereo mix and a lossless 5.1 DTS-HD.
Still, the only subtitles are on the DVD, which also had a French dub
and additional French and Spanish subs.
And yes, this blu is barebones, too (apart from
Open House),
when New Line packed their DVD even fuller than Zeitgeist and
Alliance. There's a commentary by Egoyan and Banks (they're great on
mic together), an over half-hour making of doc, a
Charlie Rose
television interview with Egoyan, some short EPK interviews with the
cast, an isolated music track, and two trailers. Must have stuff!
So,
annoying as it is, you pretty much need all the old DVDs and the
Artificial Eye blus. The prior for the extras (and subtitles, if you
need them) and the latter for the respectable HD transfers. Only
Exotica,
Calendar, and
The Sweet Hereafter are available on blu anywhere else in the world, which are far superior. The
Exotica DVD
actually didn't have any extras, but the Criterion blu has a bunch of great features, a new and improved 4k transfer and lossless audio, so you'll probably want to pick that up,
too. But that still leaves all the other early
films, so there's no way around it. Plus
Calendar is still better here than the Criterion disc. The Atom Egoyan Collection packs
each disc in a separate, thin amary case in a
cardboard slipbox. The set was reissued last year in a new box, but the
discs' contents are the unchanged.
*The IMDB and similar databases list an earlier short, 1977's Lust Of a Eunuch starring Ed Begley Jr., but I don't believe it.
