Egoyan Changed Course For `Sweet Hereafter'

For more than a decade now, Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has been turning out strikingly original, idiosyncratic films ("Speaking Parts," "The Adjuster") that have become festival favorites.

His last picture, "Exotica," even caught on at American multiplexes and became an international success.

But the Egoyan movie that is likely to have the most impact in this country is his first adaptation: "The Sweet Hereafter," based on Russell Banks' 1991 novel about a school bus tragedy that devastates the surviving parents and children in a small community.

It won three prizes at this year's Cannes Film Festival, was the runner-up for best picture in the New York Film Critics' and Los Angeles' Film Critics' awards, and swept the Genies (Canadian Oscars), winning for best picture, director, music, cinematography, editing and actor (Ian Holm). It opened here yesterday.

Egoyan's wife, Arsinee Khanjian, an actress who appears in his films, recommended the book.

"I was really overwhelmed by it, but the rights were taken," said Egoyan by phone from Toronto.

Still, he found himself returning to the book, partly because he thought he'd exhausted his own capacity for coming up with new stories.

"I was working on an original again, but I really felt that with `Exotica' I'd gone as far as I could with a certain kind of script I'd been writing. `Exotica' really was a summation of themes and ideas I'd been working on for a number of years."

Around the time "Exotica" was released he met Margaret Atwood, a friend of Banks, at a party.

"She introduced me to him, and it turned out the rights were becoming available again. He was desperate to see a film made of one of his books, and he was very supportive, very generous."

Banks and his daughter, Caerthan, ended up playing small roles in the movie. After "The Sweet Hereafter" was finished, Paul Schrader did a movie of Banks' "The Affliction," which will be released next year. Another Banks adaptation, "Rule of the Bone," is in development.

"I really wanted to honor the spirit of the book," said the filmmaker. "I didn't want to Egoyan-ize it. I didn't want to distort it."

Making some changes

At the same time, he's made some major changes, adding material from Robert Browning's poem "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," and including extensive scenes in an airplane in which a lawyer, Mitchell Stephens (Holm), reveals his motivation for trying to get the townspeople to join in a class-action suit against the bus's manufacturer.

"The book sort of writes him off as an ambulance chaser," said Egoyan, "but it is a lawyer's job to pursue the truth, and I didn't want to discredit him for what he was trying to do.

"It's a very complex role, and a very complex role in our society."

He sees the character taking on a larger-than-life significance, just as the Piper does: "In our culture, lawyers very often have assumed the role of priest, and I wanted to make him an almost messianic figure."

With this emphasis, the structure of Banks' story is significantly altered. Was Egoyan worried that by turning the lawyer into the central character, the audience would sympathize more with him?

"I don't have a problem with that because there's something so deeply ambiguous about what he's doing," said Egoyan.

He also believes that this twist makes the final turn of events more surprising: "I knew that it would be a very powerful moment, and it had to sneak up on you."

New and familiar faces

The movie is populated by faces familiar from other Egoyan pictures, including his wife, Bruce Greenwood and Sarah Polley from "Exotica"; Gabrielle Rose from "The Adjuster" and "Speaking Parts"; and David Hemblen from "Family Viewing."

But the very British Holm, who has played everything from the android in "Alien" to the manipulative restaurant owner in "Big Night," is new. He was also unexpected.

"Because of the way the film was being funded, the first consideration was a Canadian actor," said Egoyan.

"We had Donald Sutherland in mind, but he was not available. Ian Holm is just one of the most extraordinary actors, and he was totally in love with the film. It was a busy year for him, but we worked out a schedule so that he was able to do it."

For the key role of Nicole, one of the school-bus survivors, he cast Polley, who played the baby-sitter in "Exotica." In both the book and the film, Nicole has an incestuous relationship with her father, Sam (Tom McCamus), but Banks presents the relationship as cruel and abusive. Egoyan makes it consensual and seemingly casual.

"It's physically coercive and horrifying in the book," said Egoyan. "But that's become a cliche in a way and I wanted to explore a different kind of incest, a love between parent and child that becomes blurred: dangerous without it being physically coercive. Obviously it's still abusive but it's not coming from the same place."

Egoyan believes that such books and films as "A Thousand Acres" have limited the impact of physically abusive incest.

"Since 1991, when the book was written, this subject has almost become predictable," he said.

"It's unfortunate because it is incredible: the great psychological revelation of our time is how many kids have been abused. It's shocking how quickly film and literature have rendered it into a cliche."

Egoyan wanted to take the movie in a different direction, by demonstrating how such relationships can be tolerated by the helpless partner.

"Any child who is not telling anyone is allowing a degree of consent, but we never see that dealt with because it's too loaded," he said.

He believes the film "still shows how traumatic this is for the victim," though he admits some moviegoers are confused: "Some viewers don't even understand what's happening. They've denied what they've seen."

Mournful mood

The mournful tone of the film is expressed partly through cinematographer Paul Sarossy's wide-screen images of snow-covered hills and the bus slipping off the road and sinking into an icy lake. Part of this scene is a British Columbia location, and part of it is computer graphics.

"I think it's one of the most effective uses of computer-generated imagery because it's so subtle," said Egoyan. At first the bus stalls and stands on the ice; danger appears to have passed.

"I wanted you to think that that was the horror and you were over it," he said. "It was just impossible to do that in reality, to get the bus to the middle of the lake and have it sink, without using cables. I asked how we could get rid of the cables. They said digitally. So I said why not do the whole thing digitally?"

The mood is also conveyed through the score by Mychael Danna, a longtime Egoyan collaborator, and by the use of The Tragically Hip's song, "Courage."

"I always work closely with Mychael, though probably not as closely on this as we did on `Exotica,' " he said. "We've always loved early music and wanted to find a way of using it. We wanted the film to have a timeless quality.

"And we get to use songs we love. `Courage' is one of my favorites. The Tragically Hip never let anyone do covers, but they let us do this, and Sarah was able to sing it."

Polley is also credited with the lyrics for "Boy" and "Dog Track Drizzle," for which Danna provided the music.

Browning's words for "The Pied Piper" become the lyrics of the title song. In the liner notes for the soundtrack album, Egoyan describes this as "the strange music he uses to seduce the people of a town."

Egoyan said the equation of Mitchell with the Piper was almost accidental.

"A script consultant I've been working with for several years said that this was really the story of the Pied Piper, and I got goose pimples," he said.

"I don't think he understood how appropriate the poem was: the themes of punishment and reward and the responsibility of parents to their children, and the annihilation of a town's kids. It gave me the ability to emphasize the fable-like quality of it."

The film looks like a turning point for Egoyan, who has no immediate plans to do more original screenplays. He's working on an adaptation of William Trevor's 1994 novel, "Felicia's Journey," and several operas, two of them to be staged in London.

Although he doesn't want to repeat the pattern of "Exotica," Egoyan was challenged by that film's commercial success.

"I realized I could do different things with structure and still find an audience," he said. "You could actually trust an audience to explore and lose themselves in time, and create a greater degree of responsibility and excitement in the viewer. It was very liberating."