SOURCE: “Imaginary Images: An Examination of Atom Egoyan's Films,” in Film Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 3, Spring, 1995, pp. 2–14.

In the following essay, Harcourt, who teaches at Carleton University in Ottawa, traces the themes and cinematographic techniques characteristic of Egoyan's films and places the director's work in a Canadian context.

I'm attracted to people who are lost in a world that I can navigate.¹

—Atom Egoyan

There is a sequence in Exotica, the latest film by 35-year-old Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyan, that makes me think of Andrew Wyeth. There is a long shot of an extended grassy field. In the distance, a number of people appear on the horizon, walking in unison. They are looking for something. As in Wyeth's “Christina's World,” there is a surreal combination of beauty and dread. Are they on a ramble, these people, looking at flora and fauna? Or are they looking for something else? Not...