Atom Egoyan’s feature debut boasts the same ambition and poignant reflection that would come to define the rest of the Canadian vet’s work.
It follows a photographer traveling across Armenia with his wife and their driver, collecting images of cultural landmarks for a calendar company. Along the trip, the photographer notices a dubious bond developing between his two travelling companions. The film then cuts intermittently back to the photographer alone in Canada, after his marriage has indeed deteriorated.
Egoyan uses Calendar to constantly re–envision the possibilities of motion picture storytelling, often treating his movie camera as if it were his character’s carefully composed still frame, or using footage from the trip’s camcorder as a portal into his photographer’s longing voyeurism and melancholic nostalgia.
It’s a film that’s innovative and experimental, but never to the point of inaccessibility. Throughout, it favors genuine emotional engagement over stylized self–indulgence — an important quality that’s often eschewed by many similarly inventive filmmakers.
Call Number: DVD 007 444
