1150 Exotica

[John Cope]

I have to admit to shying away from Devil's Knot in particular due to the scathing reviews it received at the time of its release. How does it compare with the Paradise Lost documentaries on the same subject?

What I like best about Devil's Knot is that while it is a compression of the Paradise Lost material with the inevitable losses that entails Egoyan also engages with it all in a very direct way that is distinctive and identifiably his own. Having said that, what else I like is that he has found a way here with this subject to finally find a new form for himself to develop aesthetically and thematically. I think this is in large part what his efforts can be seen to be all about in the years post-Sweet Hereafter: finding some way forward that wasn't simply repeating himself. He knows his own limitations better than anyone and the risks of becoming boxed in by his abiding pre-occupations (this may be also why those signature ideas that do identify and inform so much of his early work, specifically ideas related explicitly to the alienating effects of technology, are dialed down or sublimated in the next phase of his career). Devil's Knot offered a perfect opportunity to return to the intellectual and academic sources that have shaped him and take a different direction. The film signals that with the rather surprising focus upon Ron Lax, a tangential seeming investigator figure, and Pam Hobbs, mother of one of the victims. Both of these are previously marginalized figures within previous accounts and Egoyan finds a fresh and productive way to frame his characteristic ambiguity through them. Lax is perhaps the most superficially dispassionate character in Egoyan's entire oeuvre and well represents the most objective possible analytic positioning and acts well as a direct director analogue in that regard. Hobbs is the center of much of the most intense mystery but again she has been neglected before; here she is allowed to be both the outlet for the drama and a more conventional or familiar figure then who is dislocated by her close proximity to roiling uncertainties. Significantly the film ends with a scene between Lax and Hobbs which reinforces the idea of a reconciliation between these opposite ends of the spectrum of human response when the spectrum is defined by Egoyanesque ambiguity. Formally it's as rigorous as any of his previous films but the specifics of the rigor itself imply a different kind of tenor this time. Though this did offer him a different direction to pursue I don't think he's really followed up on it and indeed he seems to be fairly cool toward this film (matching his critics), not even recording a commentary which is very unusual for him. He has said in interviews that he felt less close to this one because he did not write it. That isn't particularly surprising but if it has kept him from recognizing the possibilities suggested by this film for his own work then it is unfortunate as well.

[barbarella satyricon]

...

[therewillbeblus]

Since this is officially the Exotica thread, though, there was a time, a span of some seasons many years ago, when I watched and rewatched it, perhaps drawn into the atmosphere and mood of the thing more than anything else, but then always tripping over some absurdity of exposition or dialogue (there are some howlers I could recite back to you to this day) that I could never quite get past. It’s been years since I last watched it, so I won’t attempt to elaborate here, but I think all my rewatching back then may have been attempts at making the film’s final reel come off as sublime as it feels so close to doing, but which always felt weighed down by the overcooked artifice of the production as a whole and the more brainy extravagances of the screenplay.

The juxtaposition of Greenwood's inflated mood talking about his daughter into the void in the final scene, compared to what we've seen previously, could certain elicit such a response. I admittedly felt uneasy in that moment, afraid the film might risk mispronouncing this overstated exposition against the subtly of what came before. However, I found it profoundly effective and elevated the already mature paradoxes of this work (restrained yet deliberate; bluntly cerebral and intentionally vague regarding emotion, avoiding a disrespectful and artificial simplicity in this domain) into greatness.

Spoiler

Despite the dramatization of Greenwood's glowing rant, it's in the elisions of the 'deal' of the relationship that blossoms from that moment which sells this interaction, as well as the possibility that this is a memory rather than an objective flashback. If it was either principal's memory it could work. This is the 'moment' when Greenwood provided Kirshner with her conceptualization of his role in reciprocity - a time when she was vulnerable and in need of that support, which would almost certainly be emphasized with skewed recollection, as all memories are.

For Greenwood, it was a time when he was happy, and so it makes sense that he would only be focusing on how great his daughter is, without social skills reading the room to see that the babysitter is disengaged. It's not that she doesn't care, but his raving reminds her of how unhappy and neglected she is in her own isolated state. To watch him talk at her clearly defines that he doesn't care about anything other than his love for his dead child, at least until he stops to look around and see another human being in front of him. This is the kind of incident that never plays out this way (and the rest of the film doesn't indicate this is how he or any other character behaves), but it usually does in our tainted memories. Greenwood wants to remember his behavior and focus as unidimensional and directional, when life was unbroken; and Kirshner wants to remember the moment when she was seen and cared for too.

I think this is a fusion of both of their memories- perhaps the only space where there can be any intimacy between people, something that is sought but never attained between the two or any two others during the rest of the film. And even then, it's unclear where one memory starts and stops and another's begins- an enigmatic barrier that thwarts concise, cathartic, tangible harmony. Regardless, I think this memory only retains its significance in hindsight. Much like how Sarah Polley's vengeful decision potentially rests on the outcome of her handicap in The Sweet Hereafter (though it's courteously never explained and allowed to remain a mystery, which speaks volumes louder than if it were disrespectfully oversimplified), the utility of that interaction in the past between Kirshner and Greenwood festers into a strange amplification of value following his daughter's death. It's perhaps more obvious why this would be the effect for him, but since all relationship dynamics evolve as an organism of nebulous exchange no matter where or onto whom the palpable change is initiated, I think that Kirshner watching Greenwood's dive from elation into pain, coupled with empathy for him and an opportunity to be seen as he once saw another tangible girl in his life, vitalizes the power of their bond's urgent, sensitive, and tragic reciprocity.

The final frame of us/Greenwood watching Kirshner entering her house, the camera lingering on an unoccupied space outside, fixed and immobile, says everything without saying anything specific. Neither party can alter the trajectory of their lives, past or present, to achieve a sense of liberation from control. They both must lean into that powerlessness, and the meaning forged and adapted since then the only concrete relic either can engage with. This is similar to Greenwood's character's more aggressive demands to detach from a faux-catharsis brought from monetary gains in The Sweet Hereafter, having experienced his own loss before and knowing that leaning into such pain is the only answer, with allotting false hope to tactile solutions a harmful act of energy-depletion.

Characters grasp with this struggle with tangibility and connection in hazy areas between real and surreal interventions across what I've seen from him so far- perhaps most allegorically on-the-nose in The Adjuster. Having seen just a third of his filmography so far, Exotica feels like the most mature film from Egoyan yet in terms of his balance of self-restraint to overexplain and his fearless immediacy in actualizing the themes. It's also the film that's been most actively curious to sit with and understand his characters from a vantage point of acknowledged limitations- ones they reflexively inhabit as well. But that doesn't mean we can't comprehend significances that are ineffable yet detectable through cinematic means of gleaning poetic energy.

I'm excited to keep going, this movie is a quiet masterpiece. It's also a total 'John Cope artwork' and I mean that as a compliment of high order!

[dda1996a]

Calendar really deserved its own spine. It's a wholly separate work that feels very different from Exotica.

...Ideally it might have been included as a double feature with Egoyan's later and still entirely unavailable Citadel which it is formally very similar to and which is, according to the few I know who have seen it, similarly exceptional in its artistry.

Does anyone know why it has never been released or available anywhere? Even on the most obscure backdoor torrent sites it is non existant...

[beamish14]

Calendar really deserved its own spine. It's a wholly separate work that feels very different from Exotica.

...Ideally it might have been included as a double feature with Egoyan's later and still entirely unavailable Citadel which it is formally very similar to and which is, according to the few I know who have seen it, similarly exceptional in its artistry.

Does anyone know why it has never been released or available anywhere? Even on the most obscure backdoor torrent sites it is non existant...

I really wish I knew. It played just a handful of festivals and then vanished into the ether.

[Supporting_Character]

I could be misremembering this, but I was under the impression that Atom Egoyan preferred to keep Citadel restricted to more intimate screenings where it could be discussed afterwards, possibly out of concern that viewers could misinterpret it. I spoke to him very briefly about it once, and I remember him stressing that it was very different from Calendar. I'm still hoping for an opportunity to see it myself.

[Adam X]

There’s a work he made that I saw as part of a Hitchcock exhibition in Sydney, using the full footage of the various women Bob Hoskins’ character befriended in Felicia’s Journey, around the time of it’s release. I’ve not seen that pop up elsewhere either and was far more powerful than the similar unused footage included on the US DVD.

[FrauBlucher]

Beaver

[therewillbeblus]

That's pretty annoying to not compare to the AE and just assume it's better, hopefully there's a screencap comparison of both Exotica and Calendar to the AE blus to see if it's worth the double dip

[sabbath]

That's pretty annoying to not compare to the AE and just assume it's better, hopefully there's a screencap comparison of both Exotica and Calendar to the AE blus to see if it's worth the double dip

Not a convenient side-by-side comparison, but I think you can have a general idea by comparing these Blu-ray.com screenshots:

Exotica & Calendar (Criterion)
Exotica (Artificial Eye)
Calendar (Artificial Eye)