Calendar

I would call Atom Egoyan's Calendar a psychological travel film. Egoyan, who wrote and directed the film, plays a photographer sent to take pictures of Armenian churches in order to make a calendar. Egoyan's real-life wife, Arsinee Khanjian, who is in many of Egoyan's films, plays his translator/wife, who becomes very close with their driver/guide. In the course of the photographer's trip to Armenia, a gulf widens between him and his Armenian wife. Rather than trying to fix the gulf, the photographer finds himself drawn more and more to a role of observer and even voyeurist. It turns the travel narrative of exposure and increasing openness to other cultures on its head. As the film gets closer to the end, the photographer becomes obsessed with the driver/guide and even his wife drops out of the shots and out of his concern.

The film is punctuated by flashes forward to when the photographer and his wife have split up. In an attempt to work through what happened during their travels to Armenia, the photographers highers prostitutes from near Armenia to have dinner with him and then to call a man on the phone and speak seductively to him in another language while the photographer listens and reflects on his trip. He is replaying the alienation he felt as his wife spoke in Armenian to their driver. He stays in his role as observer--paying for women to serve as company for him, paying to support a little Armenia girl and counting her as his sort-of daughter (he asks one of the prostitutes how much her children cost her and compares it to the $28 dollars a month he pays for his "daughter").

The filming is incredibly well-done and beautiful, although not beautiful in the typical way--the film is not shot on the nicest of videocameras; some shots are low-fi. There are long still shots of the old churches in Armenia, which are almost like photographs. The shots are almost too long, as if just seeing them is the experience, not any explanation of their history. There is also one incredibly long, dizzying, annoying shot of sheep--it reinforces the idea that it's all about being lost in the experience. This is the lesson the driver/guide teaches, which the wife/translator explains as "Every time he comes here, he has the feeling that he knows so much about this place, and he realizes also every time he doesn't know much." This, of course, applies not only to the churches, but also to the photographer's relationship to his wife (which is also the lesson of The Cocktail Party). The photographer, sadly, doesn't learn this lesson--that the awe and feeling of not knowing someone is a necessary part of knowing them. Just as religious awe and meditation on mystery is part of knowing God.

Atom Egoyan's Ararat (recommend!) and Chloe (not recommended!) here.