As a resident of Canada since the age of three, who was born in Egypt to parents of Armenian ancestry, Atom Egoyan is a most suitable subject for the British Film Institute’s excellent series on World Directors. From his first feature, Next of Kin (1984), to his most recent work, Ararat (2002), Egoyan has set his films in a wide variety of locations around the world, and has demonstrated an extraordinary ability to address with intelligence and flair what might be termed global issues: history, memory, ritual, identity, privacy, grief, illusions, and signs.

Fortunately, Jonathan Romney, film critic for The Independent on Sunday and a contributor to several film journals, has done a superb job of interpreting Egoyan and his films. After a useful introduction and overview, Romney divides the book into ten chapters, each focusing on one of Egoyan’s feature films (in chronological order)--though ample attention is paid also to Egoyan’s student films and subsequent work for television. The book’s supplementary materials include an extremely thorough bibliography and comprehensive filmography, as well as 80 photographs, 21 of them in color.

Romney’s method is unassumingly straightforward. For each of the films under consideration, he explains the origins and development of the project in the context of Egoyan’s career, then describes the film’s narrative and principal characters, often citing Egoyan’s own comments (drawn largely from published or televised interviews) and assessing the film’s reception by critics, before drawing his own conclusions about the film. Romney’s language is equally straightforward—well organized and clearly written, though never dull, and occasionally even dazzling, as in his description of one recurring theme in Egoyan’s early work, i.e., “the smooth grain of celluloid seemingly eaten away parasitically by the shimmering pixellation of the video image” (4).

Egoyan’s films are characteristically complex and multilayered, rich in meanings that gradually unfold for the viewer. Exotica (1994), even though it is Egoyan’s most commercially successful film, is typical in this regard. Romney pays particular attention to the jungle metaphors that permeate the film, and how the viewer needs to disentangle the “jungle of relationships” found in Exotica. “We need to keep our perceptions honed,” Romney advises, because “Exotica reveals itself in layers, slowly feeding us new information, allowing us to piece together its fragments until a complete story appears to be laid bare in full view” (113-14).

Romney’s analysis of Exotica includes a paragraph on Leonard Cohen’s baleful ballad, “Everybody Knows,” which turns up twice in the film, thereby encompassing many of the film’s central themes. However, I wish Romney had also examined some of the other musical pieces heard, not only Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet, but also a Franz Schubert Impromptu, which is performed on piano by none other than the filmmaker’s sister, Eve Egoyan. Romney might also have noted the apparent playfulness of Egoyan’s parents, who named their two children Atom and Eve.

As Romney points out, Egoyan has relied throughout his career on a repertory company of collaborators, both behind and in front of the camera, such as cinematographer Paul Sarossy, composer Mychael Danna, and editor Susan Shipton. Admittedly, it is no easy task to locate and interview such individuals, but the book would have been greatly enhanced by hearing some of their perspectives. But these are relatively minor quibbles. On the whole, this volume is a superb entry in the BFI series, and is recommended for all cinema enthusiasts, from die-hard Egoyan aficionados to viewers largely unfamiliar with his work.

James Deutsch is program curator at the Smithsonian Institution and adjunct professor of media at George Washington University, Washington, D.C.