"The Sweet Hereafter"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that the source material for Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter" is Russell Banks's highly acclaimed novel in which four different narrators tell the story of a school bus accident and its devastating effect on a small town in upstate New York. The author points out that Egoyan, an Armenian/Canadian director, has "Canadianized" the film by moving the setting to a rural community in British Columbia and has added the ingenious parable of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The paper relates that, despite these minor modifications and a significant change to the ending of the film, Egoyan has remained faithful to the concerns of the novel, which focus on the painful effects of a disaster on a small town.

From the Paper:

"The challenge of representing powerful voices is in the casting of convincing actors who are capable of bringing them to life. Egoyan has done a superb job of choosing incredibly skilled performers who are as flawed and imperfect as the people they portray. Ian Holm's Mitchell Stephens, Esq. deserves the most acclaim as he has given this unfavourable character a strikingly realistic complexity."

More papers on "The Sweet Hereafter":

• Film Review # 57606 : "The Sweet Hereafter"
• Analytical Essay # 73646 : "Realism In Fiction"
• Analytical Essay # 73327 : "Nancy Drew" vs. "Sweet Valley High"

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