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Egoyan is saying something disturbing about film audiences

posted 8 years ago by frankdebernardo
4 replies | jump to latest

I always enjoy Atom Egoyan's movies. I thought "The Captive" was very good, but I also found it very disturbing. It wasn't disturbing just because of the topic of child abduction and sexual abuse, but because of what I think it is saying about audiences of movies like this, and maybe audiences of all movies.

Even though the movie was not sexually graphic or gory in its violence, I was really finding myself very uncomfortable watching it. The suffering of the parents was getting to be almost unbearable for me (and I'm not a parent). And then Egoyan showed his hand, by revealing the hidden cameras Mika planted to watch the mother, and also the fact that Mika was taping the emotionally painful reunion with the father.

After discovering the hotel cameras, one of the police officers say that the cameras were probably not their for the pedophiles to watch, but for a whole "other class of pervs" who are thrilled by watching the agony of the parents.

That's when I said: OMG! That's me! That's us! We're the voyeurs! We are watching a movie about the parents' anguish, just like the subscribers to Mika's "video club" are watching movies about the anguish of the mother, and then even some of the father's anguish.

That, to me, was the whole point of this movie. It was a movie about people who watch movies. Just like Hitchcock's masterpieces (Rear Window, Vertigo) were movies about people who make and watch movies.

That's what made this movie brilliant to me. My appreciation for Egoyan deepened immensely.

[–] Friendly1977 8 years ago

So watching people who get paid to act in front of a camera is the same as watching hidden camera footage of a real life woman who has had her child taken from her?

That's when I said: OMG! This guy is wrong!

[–] frankdebernardo 8 years ago

Of course, it is not the same thing, but the two situations are very similar.

[–] BrianNIL25 8 years ago

I appreciate your take on this movie. I'm not sure it's what the filmmakers intended, but it's certainly a plausible theory.

I personally don't watch movies to see people suffer, I watch them to be entertained and sometimes even gain a little insight to the human condition, and The Captive did both.

[–] henrimaine 7 years ago

a whole "other class of pervs" who are thrilled by watching the agony of the parents. That's when I said: OMG! That's me! That's us! We're the voyeurs! We are watching a movie about the parents'

Interesting take. This interpretation likens The Captive to an entirely different movie called The Cabin in the Woods (2012). In both movies it is the audience who is being portrayed as the ultimate bad guy for whose sake the victims are being sacrificed.