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>> Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter explores death, grief and community. Will it be the film that pushes him into the mainstream? by JOANNE LATIMER The rumour last summer went like this: Atom Egoyan was unfairly slighted when Exotica was overlooked for the Palme d'Or in 1995, so Egoyan's latest film to compete at Cannes, The Sweet Hereafter, was going to go home with the hardware in 1997. "Oh, I'm aware that there are expectations about the film," said Atom Egoyan in a Cannes bar a few days before the prizes were doled out. "But you know, I wasn't robbed last time nearly as much as Kieslowski was robbed with Rouge. It baffled me." Professional deference like that goes a long way to explain why Egoyan is so highly regarded in filmmaking circles--that, and his unique talent as a writer/director. The affable filmmaker is universally described as "a nice guy," often followed by a comment about how surprising it is that he makes such unfriendly films. Let's face it, Calendar, Family Viewing and The Adjuster aren't mainstream angst movies like the kind you find en masse at Blockbuster. Egoyan's dissection of sexual alienation, identity, ego and voyeurism takes a personal cinematic form that can leave viewers unnerved. Or unmoved. But loyal fans are something that Egoyan has in no short supply. As an auteur with minimalist dialogue and an unconventional filming style, international audiences and the home crowd are consistently fascinated by Egoyan's work. The uneasy pleasures he brings to everyday actions on-screen are addictive. With The Sweet Hereafter, the same creepy magic is at play and the cast is full of his regular actors. But while Hereafter still has the Egoyan cornerstones of alienation and dark sexuality, it's notably different from his œuvre in important ways. First of all, Egoyan didn't write the story from scratch--it's an adaptation of the Russell Banks book, and the characters have a different kind of sexual baggage than in his previous films. "For this film, we didn't get to hang out at strip clubs in Toronto with Atom all night. I tried to work it into my contract, but... ," recalled actor Bruce Greenwood, who had a lead role in Exotica as the tax auditor and also turns up in The Sweet Hereafter. "Yeah, it was a very different kind of pre-production," added Egoyan. The Sweet Hereafter is about a small rural community north of Vancouver (originally written as upstate New York). There's a fatal school bus accident involving the kids on the outskirts of town, and a lawyer comes to represent some of the parents in a lawsuit. The lawyer (Ian Holm) has his own problems: his heroin-addicted daughter, Zoe, torments him on the phone; his marriage has dissolved; and he needs to win big cases to support the demands of Zoe's habit. Meanwhile, the town's model family has an incest problem, a widower refuses to mourn his lost children and the town's educated hippies are paralyzed with grief. "I've never actually dealt with community before. It was the biggest challenge," said Egoyan, visibly tired from the festival circuit. "I've never lived in a town like that. The communities on screen that have stayed with me--like in The Last Picture Show--are formed by a shock that takes place within the heart of that particular town. But I couldn't do that, because of the fact that the school bus was picking up children on the periphery of town. They don't live in town. So I needed to give people a sense that these characters are neighbours, although they don't live that close to each other. That's the challenge.
Egoyan was the first to agree that The Sweet Hereafter represents a change in his work. "I needed a change," he explained. "Exotica was the ultimate expression of themes that I'd been working on. I couldn't go any further. And I also realized that when I originate characters, I'm fascinated by gestures, occupations, what people represent--not necessarily who they are. "Like in Exotica, the idea of making the lead character a tax auditor came after I was personally audited. It fascinated me: there was this stranger involved in intimate details of work and my daily life, but I didn't care about him as a person. Then when I read something like Russell's [Banks] book, I see that he has patience and gives observation to the details of people's lives in a way that I could never render. "Russell loses himself in the details of every particular person. So filming this adaptation has made me realize my own limitations as a writer--it has set new standards in terms of what my characters should do. The characters I've done before worked very well only within the universe of the film, but I've become impatient with that." Russell Banks--thoroughly amused by the film festival--overheard Atom discussing writing and felt compelled to interject. "It's Atom's script. I didn't write a word other than the direct lines lifted from the book. And I'm thrilled with it." Banks was approached by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) to make The Sweet Hereafter, but the option eventually expired. "Oh, Anthony and Atom weren't even the first to buy it and try to develop it. It experienced continental drift, or development hell, for about a decade." Banks spoke highly of both Egoyan and Minghella, confessing that he never thought he'd see the novel made into a film. "I didn't want to see a direct translation of the book. I wanted to see an adaptation, a transformation," explained Banks, while nodding a proud greeting across the restaurant to his daughter, Caerthan Banks, who plays Zoe in the film. "Atom made a mosaic out of it, whereas I wrote it as more of a spiral. It's highly imaginative. For example, the opening scene has Ian [Holm, the lawyer] going through a car wash. It's like a baptism, a gateway into the village. And then he gets stuck in the car wash. I wish I'd thought of that!"
"There has to be a degree of observation in the details of people's lives, and a respect accorded to them that allows them to exist as individuals," said Egoyan. "When I've written my own material, I wanted people to do certain things that would interest me. For instance, with Exotica, would a man having lost a daughter go into a strip club to reconstruct the daughter through a dancer who once baby-sat her. It's a great dramatic concept and a great thing to structure a movie around, but would it really happen? Yes, it might. But it's an extreme situation. Now I see there might be a way to make the film--not necessarily a better way--to give a bit more time to how the father developed that behaviour. For me, after The Sweet Hereafter, it's a matter of being inspired by someone like Russell, who's doing something better than you are and using it to amplify change in your own work." Reflecting on his work, Egoyan was critical of Next of Kin. The formal device of using the handheld camera made the film feel like a docu-drama--exactly the opposite effect he wanted. Again, with Family Viewing, the formalist construction wasn't to his liking. Even a recent re-screening of The Adjuster "disturbed" Egoyan because it was so far removed from his current concerns. Has Egoyan, then, become more accessible, as the publicity spin doctors are claiming? Some observers thought that becoming a father has softened Egoyan to family issues like those in The Sweet Hereafter. "Well, you could say that," he mused, then deadpanned, "But it wouldn't really be true." Egoyan has managed to make his individualistic films completely unfettered by studio pressures. The Sweet Hereafter isn't suited for network television; it's an unsettling, harsh tale about bottled sadness and bubbling anger. At the Toronto International Film Festival, Egoyan spoke out vehemently against budget cuts to the Ontario Arts Council--a funding agency he credits with sustaining his early career. "The way to remain independent is to surprise people with how small the budget is," said Egoyan. "Then they say, 'Okay, do whatever you want.' In Canada, it's hard to raise more than a few million dollars without loosing control. Then you need to have a star. Then Ian's character has to be played by Gene Hackman." Egoyan paused, and then leaned into the microphone for added effect: "I'd rather not work that way." Cover Photo by Steven Lungley Opens Friday, Oct. 10
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The adjuster
"The other real challenge," Egoyan continued," was also about geography. There must have been other kids who could walk to school, so all of the kids in town couldn't have actually been killed. Dramatically, it wouldn't work as effectively this way, so I had to create this believable void between the peripheral houses and the school in the centre--with nothing in between."
Egoyan appreciated the compliment, smiling, but preferred to talk about the process of writing when Banks wandered away to answer Greenwood's calls from the bar.