INTERVIEW: Director Atom Egoyan invites you to be his ‘Guest of Honour’
Photo: David Thewlis stars in Atom Egoyan’s Guest of Honour. Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber / Provided by press site with permission.
Guest of Honour, the new film from Oscar-nominated writer-director Atom Egoyan, stars beloved actor David Thewlis as a food inspector named Jim who tries to help his daughter Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a high school music teacher who is enduring an ordeal in her life that has left her imprisoned and searching her past for answers. The thinking-person’s film, which frequently breaks from its chronological format, is a fascinating psychological profile that touches upon power, abuse, family, parenthood and how the past can inform the present and future.
Egoyan, a Canadian director known for Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Remember, has been working on the cinematic project for quite some time, and the initial inspiration came to him because of his own role as a parent and his desire to explore the intricacies of fatherhood.
“Really it started with the notion of being a parent, this feeling of the things you know about your child and the things you don’t know about your child, the things that you feel responsible for and the things you’re not responsible for,” Egoyan said in a recent phone interview. “It comes from that place, I suppose, but then it evolves. It comes from hearing stories. In this case it came from the story of our son. He was working as a busboy at a very exclusive French restaurant here, and coming back with stories of how the restaurateur, the chef was being tormented by the food inspector. The food inspector made his life hell, and I was hearing these stories. That’s crazy that someone can have that much control, and I began to look into the job. And I realized not only do they have that much control, but they should have that much control. They are at the forefront of ensuring we are safe. At this particular time, of course, we think about health inspectors a lot, and we think about how delicate the fabric of these restaurants and these places that we go to really are.”
Egoyan began to form an image of a person whose profession demanded regulation, yet his personal life was far from regulated. Things were happening with his family that were out of his control.
“Then I began to think of this very sad but completely plausible trap that the father and the daughter were in, that this thing had happened in their life that was cataclysmic,” he said. “There were things that a father could not tell a 9-year-old daughter in terms of what was actually happening, but that the 9-year-old daughter would begin to form images that would become incredibly damaging to her. Because there was no communication with the father, those images would fester and begin to produce types of behavior that would haunt her. That would have a consequence, and the father would be bewildered, would try to understand, but would also not be forthcoming because of this fear he has.”
The scenes of Jim and Veronica’s past are not synchronized; they sort of swim in the back of their memory, causing the two to keep dealing with the past over and over again. Eventually a priest (Luke Wilson) proves to be a pivotal figure and something of a therapist for the family.
“These are the images I’m thinking as I’m writing the script, and they gave me the structure of it,” Egoyan said. “But it’s nowhere that clear to the viewer, and that’s part of what I think creates the energy of the film.”
With a sliding back and forth in the chronology, it’s up to Egoyan to ensure his cast members understand where they are in the overall story. This was a similar challenge he had on his two most acclaimed films, Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, the latter earning him two Oscar nominations.
“It’s really important that they know where they are in that chronology and what’s happening, what state of mind they’re in,” he said. “Otherwise it doesn’t work. The alchemy can’t work unless the actors are committed to those places in their own life, but that being said, there might be some confusion about why they are at that place. And that also has to be conveyed.”
Although this story of the food inspector and his daughter is quite unique and singular, Egoyan believes there are many universal themes — most importantly the theme of parenthood — that should strike a chord with the audience, who can now stream the movie on Kino Lorber’s online screening room, Kino Marquee.
“You can’t make films unless you think it’s going to find an audience because it’s too costly,” the director said. “You need to have faith that this is a story that’s going to mean things to other people, and that’s why you commit yourself to making it as a film. I think people have all sorts of different responses to this, but the ones that are most emotional are the ones who connect to that wavelength, who feel that it really is about the things that aren’t spoken about in a family and the way that that can actually begin to destroy a family.”
Having Thewlis and Oliveira join him on this cinematic journey has been especially fulfilling. Egoyan remembers the day that he sent over the script to Thewlis, an actor known for Mike Leigh’s Naked and the Harry Potter films.
“To me, when I sent the script and I heard that he responded positively, I was thrilled,” he said. “We had the opportunity to meet, and it was an amazing encounter. It’s hard to explain how exciting it is to be working with a performance like that and have the intimacy of having a camera observing these minute things, like him opening a drawer and taking out these ribbons and finding the cellphone. The way he’s able to convey the multitude of different feelings he has is so inspiring. It sort of regenerates this feeling of inspiration as you keep working through it. That was an absolute high point to work with him, but Laysla as well. She’s able to play these different phases: during this band trip where things begin to kind of slide into this other world, and her meeting the priest where she thinks she’s kind of resolved issues, and her in the jail — three very different phases in her life.”
The priest character is an interesting one for Egoyan because he breaks from his moral code and shares the details of confessions with another person. His transgression matches what Veronica’s transgression as well, which is the breaking of her code as a teacher. Ditto for Jim, who shirks his responsibilities as a health inspector.
“It’s interesting that Jim realizes that the only possible way that there might be a breakthrough in his relationship with his daughter is through this church service,” Egoyan said. “So I think we get a hint that Jim might have been someone who did have religion in his background, like in the restaurant where he makes a toast, and he says his blood. He’s making a reference to the Eucharist there, and so there’s this moment of communion. But we see that he’s fallen away from that in his life. There is no church in his life, except it does come back in such a forceful way.”
Depending on the film that he’s crafting, Egoyan will either think of a character first or the world in which that character will populate. For The Sweet Hereafter he was adapting a story by Russell Banks, and he chose to make the characters wildly different than their source material. For Exotica, he first created the location — a strip club in Toronto — before any characters came into focus.
“In this case, [for Guest of Honour], it was very much about the character,” the filmmaker said. “Jim was clear. He began to take form, but at the same time his daughter did as well, Veronica. It was a duet between the two, I would say.”
The release of Guest of Honour is somewhat bittersweet for the writer-director. The movie has met with acclaim at film festivals and made it to theaters in two countries, but, due to COVID-19, the planned wide release for audience members had to be changed to a virtual streaming platform. Egoyan is making the best of a bad situation.
“It’s just what it is,” he said of the coronavirus pandemic. “I am grateful that it is being released. I think it’s a film that can play because it’s an intimate film. So, yes, it would be wonderful to have had a theatrical run, but we had to make a decision at a certain point. We couldn’t keep delaying it. It felt like this was the way to go. I’m very thankful it had something of a festival run. It was at Venice and Toronto and London and other countries. I was coming back from a festival in Belgrade when COVID began, and all of the flights were stopped. There was a screening in New York, which I’m now very thankful that we had that small window, but, look, it’s such a cataclysmic moment. … Would I prefer that it be in cinemas? Of course, but that’s just the way it is. Safety first, of course.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Guest of Honour, written and directed by Atom Egoyan, is now available to stream from Kino Marquee. Click here for more information. Also, the Criterion Collection will release some of Egoyan’s past films on their streaming platform. Click here for more information.
