What did Atom Egoyan ever do to Orange and Teal ?

Atom Egoyan’s powerful, and often disturbing early work has just been released on Blu-ray. Unfortunately something more troubling than massively dysfunctional relationships lurks at the heart of these releases. I take a very quick look at these releases.

I discovered Atom Egoyan in the summer of 2000. It was a very formative year for me, through work I had the opportunity to spend three months living in New York, soaking up the atmosphere at ground level in one of the best cities on the planet.

It was during this time that I first watched The Sweet Hereafter and was immediately hooked on it’s complex and free-floating narrative structure, and temporal disconnection. Russel Bank’s novel from which the film was adapted was equally moving. By chance I discovered that there was going to be an Atom Egoyan retrospective at the Greenwich Village Film Forum, as a result, that summer I gorged on Egoyan’s early work, Speaking Parts, Family Viewing, The Adjuster and Exotica. Powerful stuff.

For many years the only way to watch Egoyan’s early films on home video have crumbling VHS tapes. I was first ripped off on eBay trying to buy one of his early films on a used VHS tape. In 2001, Zeitgeist Films issued Egoyan’s entire back-catalog on DVD. The quality was pretty acceptable given the low-budget 16mm sources, and the DVDs are perfectly serviceable, but aren’t exactly reference quality.

With the the video rights likely expiring after ten years (2001 + 10), in the past year there has been a rush of early Egoyan releases on Blu-ray.

As you might imagine, a fan of Egoyan’s early works like myself would be over the moon, however: I was crushed to discover that every single one of them has been Orange and Tealed.

Now maybe I can understand the Sweet Hereafter and Exotica getting the treatment, they are pretty mainstream – but Family Viewing ? Seriously ? Can there be any way in which re-tinting Family Viewing is going to open it up to a mainstream audience ?

Worst part of it is, according to at least one site, some of these transfers are director approved.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Really.

Family Viewing, The Adjuster, The Sweet Hereafter and Speaking Parts go orange and teal

Atom Egoyan goes orange and teal.

Notes

Some of the screenshots above are from the ever useful DVDBeaver however the bitter commentary is entirely my own.