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ATOM EGOYAN’s CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE CINEMATIC LANDSCAPE OF CANADA channel can follow the fate of other kidnapped children and their families... To add to the mother’s anguish, objects reminiscent of her daughter’s childhood are placed in the hotel rooms she cleans. At the same time, Egoyan avoids direct depictions of paedophilia and child abuse, portraying brutality through the horrified expressions of the police and sparing the audience from graphic images. The film also shows the girl’s subdued and almost affectionate attachment to her abductor, typical of Stockholm Syndrome (Hoffman), which makes her situation all the more appalling. The atrocities committed by the kidnapper and the subdued behaviour of the girl thus become shocking precisely because of the restraint with which they are presented. The film is centred around the anatomy of evil, the kind of evil that is almost unimaginable to the average person. The movie does not seek to research the origin of evil, nor does it attempt to explain what is inexplicable in terms of normalcy. Instead, it merely presents its existence and displays the mechanisms by which it operates. The chief villain is motivated primarily by the gratification of his own desires, but also by the business interest derived from the video service associated with his activity. The evil character portrayed in the film is completely unaffected by any moral considerations. The sole drivers of his actions are purposefulness and practicality. Nevertheless, he also has emotions, and this is expressed not only in his obvious joy of domination and watching the suffering of others but also in his almost tender attachment to the girl he has abducted, despite the fact that their relationship is clearly a case of oppressor and victim. He is a formidable figure and lacks the banality of evil with which Hannah Arendt described Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann, according to Arendt, was an ordinary man, not driven by evil or psychopathic motives, but merely following orders without thinking of the consequences. However, the negative character in the film does not fall into this category, he is more like the diabolical figures of Iago and Macbeth.’ The film draws attention not only to the existence of paedophile networks but also to the dangers of the surveillance of people in today’s world. Here, surveillance is not carried out by a state exercising power over its citizens, nor by a madman bent on world domination or plotting the destruction of the world, as in many dystopian or action films, but by a secret group of people who play with human destinies to satisfy their perverse desires. 2 To use Arendt’s own words, “Eichmann was not Iago and not Macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with Richard III ‘to prove a villain.’ Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all. And this diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would never have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. He merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing” (Arendt 287). + 191 +
