Adapted from Russell Banks' best-selling novel, Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter tells the story of how the small town of Sam Dent, British Columbia, copes with tragedy after a packed school bus crashes.
British actor Ian Holm (Big Night, The Madness of King George) plays Mitchell Stephens, a big city lawyer who arrives in Sam Dent to prepare a class-action lawsuit for the townspeople. In the resulting wave of anger and bitter recriminations, the community risks being torn apart forever.
The Sweet Hereafter is the first of three Banks adaptations now being prepared - Paul Schrader is directing Affliction, while Rule of the Bone is in development with Carl Franklin attached to direct. For Banks, however, The Sweet Hereafter was always the most unlikely to make the transition to celluloid. "When I was writing this book," he recalls, "I often said to myself: 'If one of my books ever makes it onto the big screen one day, it definitely won't be this one.''
Banks, whose 11 other books include The Book of Jamaica, Continental Drift and Searching for Survivors, says the difficulties in adapting this story lie in the book's "spiral" structure.
"Each narrator picks up from the one before and backs up what has just been said," he explains. "There's no hero, just a community that embodies courage and volition, the moral values generally attributed to a leading character."
Egoyan, director of Exotica (1994) and The Adjuster (1991), chose to reconstruct Banks' story by taking it apart chronologically and jumping back and forth along the timeline. "I've always liked that narrative style," he says. "In this film I've gone further in this direction than in my previous ones. There are about 30 different periods. Yet the narrative is so simple and the emotional imperatives so clear that you easily absorb the most ambitious leaps in time."
The Cairo-born, Canadian-raised director also wanted to create a sense of dislocation as the townspeople struggle to come to terms with the children's deaths. "The characters in the film, the inhabitants of this town, have experienced a shock, a disaster," he says. "Their sense of reality has been distorted, they are floating. They have lost their bearings, nothing means anything anymore."
Egoyan says he chose Ian Holm for the part of the lawyer who triggers suspicion and doubt among the townspeople because, "even when he plays a nice guy, there's something disturbing about him... I needed Ian's intelligence, his capacity to worm his way into the audience's subconscious in the most discreet way possible. He plays a lawyer, a man whose profession is to be anctor. He controls every muscle of his face perfectly."
Holm heads an ensemble cast of Egoyan regulars, including leading Canadian actor Maury Chaykin (Devil in a Blue Dress, Dances With Wolves, The Adjuster); Sarah Polley (Exotica, Joe's so Mean to Josephine) as Nicole Burnell, a young girl who survives the crash; Bruce Greenwood (Exotica, Passenger 57) as a devastated father; Arsinee Khanjian (Exotica, Calendar) as artist Wanda Otto; Gabrielle Rose (The Adjuster, Speaking Parts) as the school bus driver Dolores Driscoll; and David Hemblen (The Adjuster, Speaking Parts) as Dolores' wheelchair-bound husband.
Egoyan's previous Cannes competitor, Exotica, went on to pick up the International Critics' Prize in 1994 after securing a host of Canadian Genie Awards, including Best Director, Best Film and Best Screenplay. Released in over 50 territories, Exotica was distributed in Canada by Alliance Releasing and played for over six months. Miramax released it in the US on 500 screens. Adam Minns
Prod co: Ego Film
Arts Prods: Camelia Frieberg, Atom Egoyan
Dir/scr: Atom Egoyan
Ph: Paul Sarossy
Art dir: Phillip Barker
Cos: Beth Pasternak
Ed: Susan Shipton
Cast: Ian Holm, Maury Chaykin, Tom McManus, Bruce Greenwood
Running time: 110 mins
Int sales: Alliance Independent Films
