When it comes to critically acclaimed Canadian directors, it’s pretty hard to top Atom Egoyan’s resume. Since graduating from the University of Toronto, the Toronto-based filmmaker has directed twelve feature films, as well as several short films and television episodes. His 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter was nominated for two Oscars–Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay–and he’s won four awards each at the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Last August, Egoyan was appointed distinguished scholar in residence in Ryerson University’s faculty of communication and design.

This abridged Wikipedia biography was hardly necessary though for the majority of the audience members that gathered at Ryerson last Thursday night for a viewing of Egoyan’s Krapp’s Last Tape (2000). Presented by the Ryerson Image Arts Student Lecture Series, the talk was facilitated by Image Arts lecturer Mark Glassman and mostly focused on the Armenian-Canadian’s creative inspirations and use of technology in his work. Selected clips from the director’s filmography were shown, beginning with his 1984 debut Next of Kin and ending with a scene from his 2008 drama Adoration (which was nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival).

The centrepiece of the evening however was the screening of Krapp’s Last Tape, Egoyan’s adaptation of Irish novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett’s one-act play, starring Jon Hurt as the titular character. “It just galvanized this idea that I really wanted to do cinema,” recalled the director, who first read the play as teenager. Originally broadcast on television (later available on DVD), Krapp’s Last Tape sees Hurt playing a 69-year-old man stumbling through his office as he searches his desk for a box of recorded tapes. Using a reel-to-reel tape recorder, Krapp listens to himself as a young man, recalling his childhood, the death of his mother and a particularly passionate relationship he once had with a woman. Hurt delivers an emotionally raw and unflinching performance as an older man overcome with sadness over past memories and scorn toward his 29-year-old self’s naivety. 

“There’s a dual aspect to technology–it enshrines certain aspects of our lives, but it also haunts us with the things we should forget,” said Egoyan, “It depends on how the user chooses to use it.” On Krapp’s attachment to his recorder, he joked, “You would never caress an iPhone.” The director admitted that Beckett was also a direct influence for Howard In Particular, a film that he made while at U of T about an old man who reluctantly attends his retirement party, which consists of a taped conversation in an empty room.

It wasn’t just the Irish playwright’s ruminations on technology that inspired Egoyan’s work though. Closer to home, he recalled seeing fellow Canadian director David Cronenberg’s 1983 sci-fi cult classic Videodrome. “I remember seeing one of the first screenings at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon and thinking it was a fantastic piece of work,” said Egoyan. It was the themes of voyeurism in Videodrome that would have an impact on his first two films, Next of Kin (1984) and Family Viewing (1987), both of which feature characters exploring their feelings of alienation and isolation through technology.

As Egoyan’s career progressed, many of his movies reflected his own struggles grappling with his cultural identity growing up, but through the lens of constantly changing technologies. Calendar (1993) juxtaposes video shot by a photographer while on a trip with his wife to Armenia with static images of the churches he captures for a calendar. When asked about making Krapp’s Last Tape, Egoyan said, “The actual camera is one of the characters. It creates a presence through looking at a character.” Then there’s Adoration, his 2008 drama based partly on the 1986 Hindawi affair, which looks at society today’s obsession with cellphones, Skype and technology that Egoyan said occasionally “compels you to act without thinking”.  

So what’s next for the director? “I don’t think we’ve had our culture accelerated so much as we have in the past 15 years,” he admitted to the audience. It’s pretty to safe to say whatever direction we see technology heading in the future though, Egoyan won’t be far behind, using it to tell stories in his own unique way.

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Max Mertens writes about arts and culture, food and journalism for Toronto Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @Max_Mertens.

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