The Sweet Hereafter (film) country of origin Canada
Cast
Production
Adaptation
The Canadian director Atom Egoyan adapted the screenplay after his wife, the actress Arsinée Khanjian, suggested he read Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter. The novel is inspired by an incident in Alton, Texas, in 1989, in which a bus crash killed 21 students, leading to multiple lawsuits. Egoyan found it challenging to acquire the rights, as they had been optioned to another studio that was not actually producing it. Shortly before the option expired, novelist Margaret Atwood suggested to Egoyan that he meet with Banks personally after the director's success with the film Exotica (1994), and Banks was willing to grant him the rights. Egoyan later stated he was drawn to filming the novel because he felt film is for "confronting the most extreme things." As an Armenian Canadian, he also saw the story as a metaphor for the Armenian genocide, in which those guilty had not accepted responsibility.In adapting the novel, Egoyan changed the setting from Upstate New York to British Columbia, to help secure Canadian funding. He also added references to the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning, to emphasize how Egoyan saw The Sweet Hereafter as a "grim fairy tale." Nicole is seen reading The Pied Piper to children who later die in the accident. In that story, the Pied Piper leads all the children away, never to return, after their parents refuse to honour their debt to him. Egoyan wrote a new stanza in the Pied Piper style for the scene in which Nicole testifies Dolores was speeding, in which she describes her father's lips as "frozen as the winter moon." Egoyan also made Mitchell Stephens the main character and increased the importance of Stephens' daughter, and moved the revelation of incest between the Burnells to later in the film.
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