- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet

In the first chapter of The Theory Of Film Practice (1969), Noël Burch writes that "although film remains largely an imperfect means of communication, it is nonetheless possible to foresee a time when it will become a totally immanent object whose semantic function will be intimately joined with its plastic function to create a poetic function." Burch is speaking here of a sort of transcendence of the general syntactical articulations one finds in cinematic juxtaposition - a transcendence one might cite several examples of in the thirty-something years since Burch wrote his book, but which I believe has been achieved with unprecedented and sustained grace in Terrence Malick's The New World.

One could in fact go through Burch's entire text and apply its contents to Malick's film (consider the chapters 'The Repertory Of Simple Structures,' 'On the Structural Use Of Sound' and 'Chance And Its Functions'), the structure and form of which can be deduced and categorized, just as one can analyze a poem and determine whether or not, say, a particular length of meter is pyrrhic or anapestic. On the other hand, one could also savor The New World in the same way one might a great poem; the precise form and rhythms are noted primarily in that they produce their intended effect. This is a film that can wash over you and work on a sensory level (something which might be inevitable upon an initial viewing). In that sense, intense analyzation might be perceived as theft of the film's grace, its ephemeral qualities; and I'm certainly tempted to simply say that words are not enough to describe it, to limit this review to the Emerson quote at the top of the page. But because there will be more than a few viewers who label the film as 'pretentious' or 'dull' (or, as if it were a pejorative, 'poetic'), such exegesis must be undertaken if one is to justify those qualities as belonging to a work that is, indeed, truly great; and indeed, I believe The New World is a masterpiece.

And thus I find myself in a curious dilemma, in which my memory of the film is not literal enough to support such a claim in a truly exegetical manner. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that my two viewings of the picture weren't quite that at all; I've seen both the initial 152 minute cut and the newer version that is seventeen minutes shorter, and the two are different enough to provoke slightly different reactions; the former is more elliptical, the latter more urgent; both are, with the exception of perhaps one or two shots, bound by strict linear chronology, but the shorter cut is more temporally structured than the longer. These are matters not of content but of (to use Burch's term) dynamic articulation of content; The New World is triumph of cinematography and performance, of sound and picture, but it's in the cutting that Malick has truly achieved that lofty poetic function, and it is the cutting one must study to truly get to the heart of the film. I've experienced the film - and what an experience it is! - but I have yet to study it.

Hence, for the time being, I cannot demonstrate this transcendent form by example, but merely suggest it. To that end, there are three points in the film which I'd like to jump.

The first is a single edit, one that is illustrative of Malick's formal intentions. It occurs in the opening sequence of the film, as the camera, moving at a swift gait, follows Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) and her brother Parahunt (Kalani Queypo) up to a forested ridge to catch a glimpse of the English ships in the outlying bay. They slow down as they reach the edge of the forest - and then Malick cuts, not to different composition but to a few moments later in the same shot, as Parahunt is taking his lingering sister's hand and leading her off-screen, while the camera continues to push in on the barely visible ships visible beyond the trees. Such a jump cut might go unnoticed in most modern pictures, but within a period piece it's a bit more overt. Why did Malick include it? Certainly it wasn't for matters of expediency (matters of tempo, however, I'll concede to the possibility of, especially since in correlation with the outcome detailed below, they support the notion of the intrinsic deep structure of Malick's vision; such a structure can certainly be supported by chance).

Most films dealing in the past tense have an implicitly objective view; their narratives are contained within an understood capsule. Had Malick maintained this shot in its entirety, it would have certainly been a lovely model of this formula; but with this jump cut, Malick has radically altered our expectations for the shot. It is no longer about the characters' perception of an event, but our own. This is not a perspective maintained for the entire film, but its establishment in this deceptively complex shot predisposes viewers to the intensely subjective form of the film. It is a subjectivity of character, certainly, and Malick's trademark use of lyrical inner monologue are as useful to this end as ever (as is his sound design in general - take notice, for example, of the foley recorded from within Colin Farrell's helmet); but the film is also subjective in terms of tempo-spatial orientation - a trait alluded to from the onset by the title, which is not the historical cliche it seems to be.

Temporally, it is important to note that the film is not occurring in the past tense but in the present, and the manner in which Malick cuts it prevents us from subjugating the narrative with our understanding of history. For example, the criminal treatment of Native Americans by white settlers that continues to this day is not a foregone conclusion. In a scene cut from the film, Captain Christopher Newport (Christopher Plummer) says: "let not America go wrong in her first hour." Within the context of the film, there is nothing loaded about that statement. This vantage point affords a sense of wonder, hope and, in the first half especially, an enchanting naivete.

It is darkened slightly, however, by a cut of the distinctly syntactical type that has, interestingly, been removed from the shorter version of the film. A sequence showing the English sailors marveling at their new surroundings concludes with an overhead close-up of a man's hands lifting an oyster from the tidewaters, while a voice is heard saying "We're going to live like kings." In the original cut, this shot and line of dialogue were juxtaposed in a hard cut with another close-up, this one of a tree and an axe sinking deeply, violently into it. The correlation here is immediately clear; the English see nature as a means to an end.

Perhaps it was too clear, however, for in the shorter version these two shots are separated by an entirely new sequence in which Capt. Newport explains his plan of action in this new land, intercut by quick shots of the men at work which, eventually, leads to the shot of the axe and the building of a fort. Because the juxtaposition of Newport's dialogue and the accompanying series of shots form a montage, this sequence helps establish the temporal form of the film more solidly than the prior version, which threw the viewer in headlong (this, if anything in the new edit, might be perceived as a commercial acquiescence); it also dilutes the caustic nature of the original splice, decreasing even further any chance of predisposition. Newport's tone of voice has a commanding quality; the violation of nature is no longer such, but a necessary - perhaps even noble - adherence to order. At the end of the film, when the New World becomes not America but England, Malick's gaze, now aligned in subjectivity with Pocahontas instead of John Smith, facillitates the same wonder it did in America, and this early alteration substantiates the unbiased perspective of the film (if not Malick himself).

This closing act of the film finds Malick out of his favored element for the first time in his career; the natural, nurturing opiate of an open landscape has been replaced with the strict verticality of 18th Century civilization. He handles this readjustment in the only way I think he could: as if there was no change at all. As mentioned above, Pocahontas' indoctrination to English society is a mirror of John Smith's time spent at her tribe's camp. Once the initial threat has passed (Smith's tribal death sentence, Pocahontas' repression in Jamestown), each is left unburdened, free to simply radiate.

At least for a while. For reasons far greater than cultural context, the beaming princess who meets King James I cannot maintain that countenance, and before too long she and the film itself reach their end. It is a this denoument that will likely affect most profoundly, and with good cause; thus, it is with it that I want to conclude. The last four minutes of the picture, set to a reprise of the Vorspiel of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, are Malick's masterstroke, the steeple to this cathedral, an organic confluence of seemingly disparate sounds and images. There is a series of three shots in this sequence that I wish to call out. The first is of an empty bed. The second two comprise a jump cut similar to the first I cited; they again featuring Parahunt, who by this point in the narrative has died. He isn't the first spirit to appear in the film; Pocahontas' mother is glimpsed from time to time (although her presence in the shorter cut has been greatly marginalized - a change quite representative, in fact, of the differences between the two versions), answering her daughter's invocation. Both ghosts appear as guide, and are extensions of the film's subjectivity. The mother is opaque, perhaps representing her daughter's literal mother, perhaps signifying the Earth; perhaps both. Parahunt's presence, however, is an abstraction of intense beauty and startling, specific purpose, especially when conjoined with the composition directly preceding his appearance. This is not an example of syntactical juxtaposition. Its articulation is, quite purely, poetic.

There is a fourth shot which is also worth considering. It is a static one, depicting a gravestone weathered by time and the elements. The shot appears without precedent, and is not remarked upon in any way. My instinctive response was that this must be the real grave of Pocahontas; research reveals that the site no longer exists, but nonetheless, the grave seems to exist outside of the established temporal context of the film. It alludes to the death of its heroine, but in so much as it is a man-made monument beset by decay, it is the film's first and only nod to the history that it is to come. It is an acknowledgement that renders the film an elegy; and in it, Malick makes his own opinion known.

2. The Phantom Limb / Pan With Us (dir. Jay Rosenblatt / David Russo)

3. 2046 (dir. Wong Kar Wai)

4. Saraband (dir. Ingmar Bergman)

5. Funny Ha Ha / Mutual Appreciation (dir. Andrew Bujalski)

6. A History Of Violence (dir. David Cronenberg)

7. Kissing On The Mouth / LOL (dir. Joe Swanberg)

8. Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith / King Kong (dir. George Lucas / Peter Jackson)

9. Last Days (dir. Gus Van Sant)

10. I'll leave this one open for the time being; I've yet to see Cache and The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, and for the present can't decide between Capote and Broken Flowers and Be Here To Love Me and The Squid And The Whale and Brokeback Mountain and Head-On and Me And You And Everyone We Know and Yes and a whole host of exemplary films. It was a damn good year.

It's also a definitively labyrinthine one: Gaghan recently told the LA Times that he had to paper his house with note cards to keep the plot in order, a luxury he actually extends to one of the characters in the film and which the audience will probably envy. This isn't really a point of contention, mind you; he'll be criticized for being oblique, but I, for one, am far happier playing catch-up then being force fed expository conspiracy theory. I couldn't quite tell you how every single character falls into place in relation to each other and the narrative's conflict any more than I could actually list all of them (there are about 70 speaking parts), but I'm happy to give Gaghan the benefit of the doubt and assume he's done his research. And I don't think he's presuming to be more intelligent then his audience, nor does he expect audiences to be able to completely follow these machinations he's devised; all that one really needs to be aware of going into Syriana is the possibility (or, rather, the fact) that the line between foreign policy and the oil business is growing ever finer. At this precise point in history, it's hard not to be aware of that, if not infuriated by it

Which of course is why Gaghan (who previously won an Oscar for writing Traffic for Sodebergh) made the film in the first place. This incensed sensibility brings about a very interesting and unsettling phenomenon, and while it's something very much worth discussing, it does require that I disclose the ending of the film. So consider the film recommended, and consider returning to this review after you've seen it.

Of the film's parallel narratives, there are three that are ostensibly the primary threads, based around George Clooney's aging, idealistic CIA operative; Jeffrey Wright's corporate attorney; and Matt Damon's conflicted, opportunistic financial analyst. All three strands are bound by the big oil merger that is the root of the film, and there are multiple ancillary shoots intertwine with them. Then there's another story instigated by the merger, which Gaghan keeps separate from the rest: it concerns two youths who are recruited into a terrorist training camp in Egypt after being dismissed from their jobs in the oil fields. Most of the characters in the film seem to be fighting for screen time, but the scenes with these boys are simple and relaxed when they intermittently occur; as a result, their inevitable transformation from normal teenagers to suicide bombers is eerily swift and understated, to the point that they themselves barely seem to have realized what's happened until it's too late.

What happens is that, just as the newly merged corporate monstrosity celebrate their resumed presence in the Gulf, a boat laden with explosives is driven into the pipeline. This serves as an underscore to simultaneous act of calculated terror, this one enacted by the CIA in the name of foreign policy that leaves some of the film's few admirable characters dead or seriously disillusioned. The parallels are obvious, of course, but here's where the film gets tricky. Gaghan orchestrates these dual attacks in concert with a third sequence, a party for 'Oil Man Of The Year' at which all the corporate bigwigs, whose hands are, as far as Gaghan's concerned, demonstrably in the government's pockets, sip cocktails and give self-congratulatory speeches about how much profit they're making. Their callous cajoling, juxtaposed as it is with death and destruction, is explicitly constructed to draw ire from the audiences, to fire up that same sense of indignanation that Clooney achieved through similar (if less bombastic) means in Good Night And Good Luck - and indeed it does. It is so successful a manipulation, in fact, that it makes a triumph out of the terrorist attack. A vengeful triumph, certainly, and a terrible one; but a triumph nonetheless.

Is this appropriate? I think it is. The film's structure is solid enough to support such a provocation, and indeed is perhaps better for it; it is this element of violent and uncertain flux, I think, that saves the film from ending on a note of resigned dislliusionment. It is certainly not a pro-violence picture, and Gaghan is certainly not condoning terrorism - in fact, I'm not completely sure that this wasn't simply an unintentional side effect of a very intentional comparison - but I think he is inferring that the imperfect but well-intentioned America represented by Damon, Clooney and Wright's characters has been overrun by Big Oil, Big Business, and the Small Government they control, and that this has become something of an elephant in the back room. What will it take to get people to confront it? The United States Gaghan represents in Syriana is one that needs to be brought to its knees and dealt a reprimanding blow, a perspective which will be perceived as either inexcusable or extremely patriotic.

And, for that matter, what does it look like? What sort of candy could have been so good as to lure young Edmund to corruption? Were I five years old today, the answer would be a Google image search away; but back then my imagination was all the search engine I had, or needed, and it conjured for me an image of a pale pink toffee-like confection - "sweet and light to the very center," as Lewis described it. Now, however, I've seen this new film adaptation of the novel, in which the Turkish Delight (and most of the other memorable details - the mothballs in the wardrobe, for example) does indeed make it to the screen intact; I can presume that the filmmakers did their research, and that the candy depicted is, indeed, honest to goodness Turkish delight; and I have to say: it looked like it tasted better in my imagination.

So it goes. To an extent I'm very grateful that director Andrew Adamson (who prior to this directed Shrek and its sequel, the latter being one of my least-favorite films in recent memory) remained so faithful to the chronology of the text, and that his screenplay, co-written with Ann Peacock, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, takes no revisionist leaps or bounds (aside from an additional action scene with the wolves, and a bit of character development for Edmund that pays off quite nicely). I very much missed the tragic Christmas party held by the fox and the mice, and I waited in vain for an appearance by the giant Rumblebuffin, but what can you do? Such is the nature of adapting beloved literature, and just as scores of Jane Austen fans are currently up in arms over the changes made to the recent adaptation ofPride & Prejudice, there will be would-be Narnians galore distraught over this film's failure to live up to the pictures in their heads.

But subjectivity comes in degrees, and what ultimately makes an adaptation great is its ability to stand on its own, even when it departs from preconception; on that level, the film does have a handful of triumphs. Lucy and Edmund, for instance, portrayed pitch perfectly by newcomers Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes (Edmund, in particular, comes into his own as a fully rounded character better than anyone else in the film); or Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and most of the other creatures, who through sheer delight overcome the hurdles of their artificiality. There is Tilda Swinton, beyond reproach as the immaculately dispicable White Witch.

And then, on the other hand, there is the great lion Aslan. It is the film's greatest fault that he comes across almost as a non-entity. Realized by CGI and voiced by Liam Neeson, he's a fairly majestic physical presence when he's on screen - but that's actually a relatively small amount of time, and the metaphysical import of the character is muddled. His self-sacrifice is moving but not heartbreaking; his return, a pleasant if not exactly joyous surprise. Lewis didn't give the Aslan much more face time in the book, but he was also the only overtly epic element in a novel that was was otherwise anything but: the final battle scene, which in the film is a grand clash of humans and animals and special effects, occupied about half a page in the book. How can a grave, gentle Lion command the screen when it's being occupied by rampaging centaurs, giants and polar bears? By actually opening the film during the blitzkrieg on London, the filmmakers seem to be drawing a comparison between a real war and a fanciful one - a terrific idea, but Aslan's place between them is uncertain. I wish a few historical elements from some of the subsequent books had been culled for the sake of this film's mythological texture.

As for Aslan's Christological nature, there are no two ways around it: Lewis wrote the book as a Christian allegory, with Aslan as an explicit savior figure, and the film preserves that perspective. It is no more explicit or implicit than it is in the book; nor is it more overt than any other fantasy tale that plays upon the mythic stereotype distilled by Campbell, with the difference that, unlike George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis' biblical undertones are intentional. Because they are undertones, I'd cry foul if anyone dismissed the film or the book for that reason; the various other criticisms leveled against the series, however - that it is racist, as Phillip Pullman claimed recently, or sexist, and centered around the concept of a masculine, muscular and very Western Christianity - are certainly arguable. They are points that have more to do with the later Chronicles, but the groundwork is layed here, and one could take umbrage with the royal precedence given to Peter and Edmund over Lucy and Susan, or the hierarchy of the animals. I'd rather look at the story as a children's fable by an intelligent theologian; but subtexts can always be found, considered and contended.

The Chronicles Of Narnia has a direct cousin, both in literature and film, in Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings series (although Tolkien was hardly a fan of his friend's tales and their mishmashed mythology). Anyone who's read that trilogy knows that Peter Jackson made quite a number of changes when he brought it to the screen, including a similar extension of a few paragraphs in The Two Towers into one of the longest battles ever capture on film. He received relatively little criticism for these alterations, due, I think, to the coalescing of his passion for the material and the intensity of his personal vision. He made the films feel more faithful than they actually were; they were the embellished memories of someone who had read and loved the books. Adamson hits the predictable sort of middle ground. He doesn't want to step on the feet of the purists, nor does want to deprive audiences of spectacle, but he doesn't he have the directorial finesse to fully push the story into the realm of the cinematic epic while maintaining the intimacy of the novel - which is where Jackson succeeded so astoundingly; adapting material like this is a lose-lose situation that every now and then someone like him manages to win.

Adamson's love of this material seems slavish, but not quite passionate. He hits the emotional chords, gets the color scheme right, put all the characters in their places and sets the camera in a position to catch the action with some degree of style; but I wonder if, ultimately, he was too intent on letting the overriding vision be Lewis,' rather than his own. It's an admirable conceit, but it neglects the fact that Lewis' vision was already optimally represented in ink, on paper. Throughout The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, there's a conflict of scope and tone, of excess and restraint, that is never quite reconciled, and it leaves the built-in audience open to the one thing that will undo just about any literary adaptation: making comparisons to the source.

Von Trier offered some justification of his own at the Cannes premiere of Manderlay, his follow-up to Dogville and the second in his trilogy of films about the US. "America is sitting on our world," he said. "I am making films that have to do with America because 60% of my life is America. So I am in fact an American, but I can't go there to vote, I cant change anything. I am an American, so that is why I make films about America." In other words, a world power that not only influences but imposes should be, at the very least, open to artistic license.

And of course Von Trier, ever the rabble rouser, grabs that license and runs with it. His inferences in Manderlay are, as always, far from subtle, but one of the more surprising and perhaps slightly disappointing aspects of this picture is that it actually makes Dogville seem a model of subtlety. Like its predecessor, Manderlay is a political allegory, but this time there is no question as to its meaning; differential interpretations are pretty much negated from the outset, expediting the inevitable arguments amongst audience members over whether the film and its points are valid. I'm of the opinion that any such argument is almost validation enough, especially when the provocation runs as deeply as it does here.

The story finds Grace, the naive gangster's daughter, emancipated from the Wilder-esque tyranny of Dogville; so too has Von Trier delivered himself from the trappings of his trademark distressed-damsel melodrama, and thus, for the first time in one of his films, his heroine is far from put-upon. Grace was baptized with fire at the end of Dogville: she has learned to use violence to her advantage and, backed up by her father's hired guns, she's ready to impose righteousness as she sees fit. When she and her criminal enclave make a brief stop at the Southern plantation of Manderlay and discover that slavery is still in effect within its gates, 70 years after Lincoln's proclamation, she decides - nay, is compelled - to put her foot down and do something about it.

So: mull over the implications of a character who invades a foreign property, deposes the ruling body and by force brings freedom and the democratic principal to the former subjects; understand that the white plantation owners divided the slaves into factions, and had a keen understanding of how to keep these groups in check: and add to your consideration that fact that Grace does not anticipate the long-term effects of the dissolution of this order. You've by now come to a conclusion as to the allegorical nature of the film, and you are probably halfway correct. In fact, you're probably 100% correct, but Von Trier is the sort of filmmaker who will take your assumptions and raise them. This is not a film of liberal ideology, nor is it one in which liberal ideologies are unexpectedly subverted by conservatism. No, this is a film in which the political machine as a whole is subverted by the viciousness of human nature, and all the good and bad and mixed intentions that go along with it. In the microcosm of Manderlay, the Civil Rights movement and the war in Iraq are equally admirable in their intentions, equally disingenuous in their means, equally destructive in their ends, and therefore imminently comparable.

This is theorizing that will be offensive to some, enraging to others, and yet it's worth thinking about, if only so that one might understand more fully why it is disagreeable. Von Trier is foregoing the trees in favor of the forest, and choosing to stand on a side that is generally shied away from, but he should be commended for having the courage (and chutzpah) to follow his convictions through to their logical end. It's hard to say, then, whether the predictability of the storyline its a fault of its author or its subject.

It is this transparency, though, that renders Manderlay a more biting but less satisfying film than Dogville. So eager is Von Trier to get to the point that he nearly capsizes the picture with exposition and thickly applied metaphors during the first fifteen minutes; it takes a while for the film to find its narrative footing, and because it starts off so shakily, the audience can't help but spend that time comparing Bryce Dallas Howard to Nicole Kidman. Howard takes over the role with courage and conviction; I felt bad for her in those early graceless (pun semi-intended) scenes, but she ultimately takes the reins of the film and makes it her own. Willem Dafoe takes over the paternal role that James Caan originated; other Dogville veterans, including Lauren Bacall and Chloe Sevigny, play new characters, although their presence is minimal this time around, with precedence given to the African American cast. Danny Glover (who reportedly took a long time deciding whether or not he would appear in the film), Isaach De Bankolé, Mona Hammond and the rest of the cast are all outstanding.

With due respect to Howard's performance, I do wish that Nicole Kidman hadn't dropped out of the trilogy; in a series of films that are physically defined by chalk outlines on soundstages, she would have provided a valuable personable link. On the other hand, perhaps the conceit of multiple actresses playing the same role will, in hindsight, almost seem a boon to trilogy, rather than an exemplification of avant garde under duress. The populace that Grace may come to represent by the third film (which will be titled Washington) may well benefit from a shifting visage. Regardless, I'm pleased that Von Trier was not so bound to his cast that he let them define his vision. His work deserve to be seen, simply because it incites consideration and confrontation of ideals. He's a legitimate provacateur.

Some may note that while he's quick to criticize America, he doesn't offer a solution; I'd counter by suggesting that any solution would be quite unsatisfying. The topic is too broad; breaching it is enough. And this is a critique, after all, that is not bound by state lines or bodies of water; it is an argument which breaks down geographical borders altogether. How can a Danish filmmaker who's never left Europe consider himself an American? Because, thank God, he's as rotten as the rest of us.

Real life in terms of Lewis and Martin?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, in the book it's based very clearly on Lewis and Martin, and I found that it was interesting, but also really distracting. It worked for the novel, but I just thought it would be kind of ridiculous to try that, to recreate Martin and Lewis on film. It becomes impossible, and also really misleading, because this didn't happen to Lewis and Martin. You would have the audience wondering whether it's based on a true story, so I thought it would be better to create an act which might have been possible, but wasn't based on any existing act.

All of your films, by and large, have a very strong element of mystery to them. This is your first picture, though, that is more about solving the mystery, as opposed to revealing the explicit after-effects of it (although it does deal with that as well).

Yeah, exactly and that's where it is more of a genre piece. I think the mystery in a lot of my other films is kept at a philosphical level. In this case, because it's so strategic, you have to provide certain answers, or else the audience will feel cheated. And that does create a different tone -- although I would say that in the way that the mystery is concluded here, there's a lot of ambiguity. It's all in her mind, right? She needs to believe what she's thinking at that point. That's the reason why he (note: to reveal the character he's referring to would be a spoiler) can walk away so casually; as alarmed as he is by this revalation, he also realizes there's absolutely nothing to support it. In a way, there's that collision between the private and the public - we have this event that everyone sees, this telethon broadcast for millions of people, and then this very private event that occurs in the middle room of a hotel suite. We'll never know exactly what went on there. It's all conjecture. Although it's presented as as a solution, I think it's a lot more open ended.

You and David Cronenberg are well known as Canadian filmmakers, and you both make very distinctive, intelligent pictures. I've always had this notion that it's easier to make such films in Canada, as opposed to Hollywood - is this true in any way?

On one level, there's - hmmm. I don't know. That's a very good question. It's much more difficult to get the film distributed. It's much more difficult to insure that ...compared to the money you can get in Hollywood, you're working at much more modest level. But I also think that if you are able to present your work in a certain way, there's a cultural mandate that is being served, and that does mean that you can have a career that's different than the one you might be able to have in the States. But you are also limited in terms of distribution. I've been very lucky; my films have always been distributed in the States. But there are a lot of my colleagues who haven't had that break, and their films are relegated to festivals and marginal distribution. So the great advantage to making a film in Hollywood is that, if we're talking about a studio film, the film is going to get seen, for better or worse.

You shot parts of this film in Hollywood. Was there a palpable difference between shooting in Los Angeles and Toronto?

It was really challenging, and the production team rose to that challenge, but that's a very good example of one of the ways in which you're limited. Because of the funding, we could only shoot exteriors in LA. So there are all sorts of bizarre, arcane restrictions on how you actually structure the movie. But again, I remain convinced - I mean, if you look at a film like The Sweet Hereafter, which was optioned by a studio and would never have been made as a studio movie, or a film like this one as well; it's great to be able to make the film and then reinsert them into the system, with the satisfaction of knowing that the film could not have been made through that system. But then again, there are a lot of American independents that are trying to find alternate ways to making a film out of Hollywood as well. I think there's a pool of private money in the states that isn't available in Canada. There are many different ways in which movies end up getting made, but the bottom line is that you want distribution, and you want there to be some sort of system in place to allow the film to get out there.

When you look at your work - either in retrospect, or as you're planning a new project - do you ever stop to think about how a given picture fits into your oveure? Do you think about what constitutes an Atom Egoyan film?

Oh, no, I don't have to do that, because I think things just sort of creep in anyhow. which is kind of weird. When I started making this film, I thought this was going to be completely different from anything I'd ever done, but I think it's curious to look at it now and go, 'oh, yeah, the themes are all there!' I think it's dangerous when you start doing that consciously, because you risk self parody. There are obsessions and ways in which you will present material, and certainly tonal aspects which are part of your craft, even when you're in totally new territory like this film is. It's dealing with popular entertainment and noir and all these other genres, but there are things that I can now identify as being unmistakably mine, but I think it would be lethal to pursue that as a matter of course. It's probably better to resist it.

Well, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Congratulations on the film, and I hope that the film turns out to be a mainstream success...

Well, it's got a major shackle...

The MPAA Thing?

Yeah, but we'll see what happens.

Where The Truth Lies is indeed an adult film, and an intelligent one - to an extent. It is a mystery that embraces its own lurid, noirish nature, but Egoyan has trouble reconciling those elements with the more humanistic qualities that always take precedence in his films. One senses that his attention is consistently drawn towards the foibles of his characters and the layers that mask them, rather than the wheels of the plot that he must continue to keep pace with. He maintains a fairly good balance between pulp trash and character study through most of the film, but then comes an ending that is just too preposterous to accept. I think it's impossible for Egoyan to make a film that isn't complex on a whole multitude of levels, which is a great thing in general but ends up being bad for this picture.

The mystery begins in the late 50s, when a girl's corpse is found in a bathtub in the hotel suite of popular comedy duo Vince Collins (Colin Firth) and Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon). It continues in the 70s, as a young journalist named Karen O'Connor (Alison Lohman) investigates both the death and Vince and Lanny themselves, who were cleared of any charges but never performed together again. Karen wants to write the definitive book on the pair; more than that, she wants to satisfy her own curiosity, for in her schoolgirl days she was their number one fan, and the possibility that one or both of her idols might be a killer both terrifies and titillates her.

That disposition is where the truth, for Egoyan, ultimately lies; the solution to the mystery is related to but less interesting than his study of the dual nature of celebrity, and how those natures appeal to and are perceived by us, the adoring, condemning public. Out of this conflict comes one of the best elements of the film: Kevin Bacon's performance as Lanny, the ostensibly wild and zany half of the duo, the Lewis to Vince's Martin. The first time he appears in the film, he's cracking wise and singing his heart out on a national telethon and stealing the heart of 13 year old Karen; when she and we catch up with him fifteen years later, that winning grin is wearing thin around the edges and his eyes are dull and distant. We see him in his heyday, smoldering in the bedroom, and then again when he seduces Karen after their first meeting, where he seems more compelled by the belief that she expects this of him, rather than any real desire on his part. His public and private faces have merged, and the complexity with which Bacon depicts this rivals any of the twists and turns the narrative might take at.

Firth is good too, and his less showy role could have been the standout, had it not been undermined by the necessity to keep certain things secret, to let the plot unfold in the restrictive, predetermined manner of a murder mystery. I don't think it was a mistake on Egoyan's part to try to make a genre film. I do think he did a good job at adapting the aesthetic conventions of the genre to his purposes; the film looks and and sounds gorgeous, with a Herrmann-esque score by Mychael Danna and glossy photography by Paul Sarossy that makes the film look like a technicolor noir. But compare this film to Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education, which also was a character study under the guise of a murder mystery, told in exactly the same style and manner (and which also, incidentally, received an NC-17 rating). Almodovar's playful, exuberant touch worked in concert with any overcooked genre conventions, but Egoyan's approach is so serious (rightly so, from a certain perspective) that it frequently rubs up awkwardly against his stylistic conceits., When it comes to the distended denoument, that severity topples the credibility of the film entirely; some viewers might find the closing scenes of the film unintentionally humorous.

Other less discerning audiences (or even those unaware of Egoyan's sublime earlier work) might find the the swirl of wanton eroticism and mystery entirely intoxicating. Unfortunately, it may never reach those audiences; the ratings board, in their infinite wisdom, has taken care of that. I dug my own grave by mentioning that NC-17 rating outright in this review, and thus I must fill it here by mentioning the scene that the MPAA took umbrage with. It's the one sex scene in the film that is utterly clear in its intent, necessary in its explicitness, and perfect in every aspect of its execution. I won't reveal the details of it here, but I will say that, when one compares it to a preceding sex scene, an even more unpleasant image of the ratings board emerges; one in which the deciding factor isn't explicitness as much as it is a sad, unpleasant social bias.