Taglines: In search of relative comfort…
The Adjuster movie storyline. The first of Egoyan’s films to be made with a substantial budget ($1.5 million), courtesy of Alliance Films and producer / distributor Robert Lantos, The Adjuster is part absurdist comedy, part tragedy, shot in stunning CinemaScope by Paul Sarossy.
It stars Elias Koteas as Noah, an insurance adjuster who attaches himself to fire victims with a frightening devotion that includes not only comfort, but also sex. He is alienated from his wife, Nera (Arsinée Khanjian), a film censor with her own disturbing obsessions. She secretly videotapes the smut she watches, to replay at home for her sister.
They live in a model home in a surreal, discontinued suburban development. The film’s other major characters are a rich, bored couple (Maury Chaykin and Gabrielle Rose) who enact strange sexual games in public. Their lives overlap when Chaykin’s character wants to use Noah’s home for a stag movie.
The Adjuster is a 1991 Canadian drama film directed by Atom Egoyan. It premiered at the New York Film Festival. At the 17th Moscow International Film Festival it won the Special Silver St. George. In 1993, the Toronto International Film Festival ranked the film tenth in the Top 10 Canadian Films of All Time, though the film does not appear on the updated 2004 version.
In his incisive analysis of the film, Tom McSorley asserted that The Adjuster expanded upon the thematic concerns Egoyan established in his first three films, namely “the duality of intimacy and detachment… He also pursued further investigations of the idea of the family, the ambiguous role of technology, and the nature and function of both skill and moving images in contemporary experience.” McSorly also argued that the film interrogated “the processes of narrative structure and disclosure and how these processes affect the creation of meaning within the film’s fictional universe, as well as in the spectator’s construction of knowledge during the watching of that universe as it unfolds.”
The Adjuster (1991)
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Starring: Elias Koteas, Arsinée Khanjian, Maury Chaykin, Gabrielle Rose, Jennifer Dale, David Hemblen, Rose Sarkisyan, Armen Kokorian, Jacqueline Samuda
Screenplay by: Atom Egoyan
Production Design by: Linda Del Rosario, Richard Paris
Cinematography by: Paul Sarossy
Film Editing by: Susan Shipton
Costume Design by: Maya Mani
Set Decoration by: Linda Del Rosario, Richard Paris
Music by: Mychael Danna
MPAA Rating: R for sensuality and language.
Distributed by: Orion Classics
Release Date: September 26, 1991
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