Internal Dignity

It appears that both the film and novel versions of The Sweet Hereafter deal with the mutability of perspective. In both the film and the novel, everyone has their own interpretation on not only the events concerning the bus accident, but also their own actions and morality. Even though little “action” happens in both book and film, Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks want to show the complexity and importance of people being involved in a major accident either wanting or not wanting to investigate what happened to them; this is something that is not presented in a great deal of fiction. Someone like Nicole has a right not to want to seek the “truth”; however, Mitchell Stephens also has a right to seek the “truth”. The problem in this situation is that since nothing can be factually proven in regards to the circumstances of the accident, the “truth” is the different character’s interpretation of events which are always clouded by their moral perspective. I think it’s this complexity that leads to the complex structural choices of both novel and film.
One of the themes that intrigues me about the book of The Sweet Hereafter is the idea of how truly hard it is to interpret whether someone is lying or not, or whether they are guilty or not. The questions that Banks subtly hints at to the audience reading his novel is that we do not live in a black and white world were certain people are designated as good and certain people as evil. Many characters in the novel lie for good reasons, regarding the bus accident that killed many students. A clear example is Nicole Burnell’s account of what happened. In the novel, Nicole realizes that she’s being used as a linchpin in a case that she doesn’t necessarily agree with. (She’s being used this way because she’s the only surviving student on the bus that day.) Also, she feels powerless because she is being used both by the lawyer Mitchell Stevens and her own family, who want to simply win a case where they can obtain money to buy a new computer. She’s trying to win back her individuality from her father who molested her. Nicole feels that the students on that bus never would want to have their case investigated, just like many of their parents don’t want to tread down that road; for a parent like Billy, dragging the whole situation in a courtroom is not the proper private way of mourning his child’s death. The private nobility of characters like Nicole and Billy is in contrast to someone like Mitchell Stevens. Banks is a writer who never wants to have a predisposition towards any one characters viewpoint in his novel. Rather, he’s a writer whom believes in questioning character motivation before coming to a conclusion; even a character he may empathize with. Mitchell Stevens doesn’t do this.
By the end, it’s the reader that has to decide on their own who is right or who is wrong in a situation like this. Is there such an easy answer? Yes, Stevens may be right about making someone pay for the accident. However, Does Stevens have a right to investigate in this matter, considering that those were not his kids who died in the accident? Also, does Stevens have a hidden rationale for doing what he’s doing? The problem with idealists, especially ones without the proper facts who are simply following their gut intuition, is that no one examines why they are so passionate about the cases that they are involved in; no one examines their intentions because they feel that if someone is selflessly trying to find justice that there can’t be any hidden rationale behind such an act. In fiction, the selfless lawyer is always morally right in doing what he/she is doing. Banks shows the reader that Stevens took this particular case so personally because he felt guilty for the fact that he could never save his own daughters life. He’s attributing his victimhood onto the other parents involved in the accident. This is wrong because some parents are not feeling those particular emotions that he’s feeling, and it’s also wrong because once a lawyer is personally involved in a case, they begin to be blinded into believing whatever they want to believe. What makes the book such a complicated one is that Stevens is not necessarily a villain. This quote is an indication of how hard it is to judge someone as selfless as Mitchell Stevens: “But it wasn’t greed that put me there; it’s never been greed that sends me whirling out of orbit like that. It’s anger. What the Hell, I’m not ashamed of it. It’s who I am. I’m not proud of it, either, but it makes me useful, at least. Which is more than I can say for greed” (Banks, pg. 89.) He is someone who also may not necessarily be wrong in doing what he’s doing. No one, including the author, really has any answers in this regard.
What is satisfying about the film is how, in some strange way, all the feelings mentioned above are enhanced to greater effect. Even though the film stays closely attuned to the book, both in terms of tone and plot, there are differences that merely enhance what Russell Banks was getting at in his novel. Banks has admitted this, in relation to the Pied Piper aspect of the story. When one reads the novel, there is a very subtle feeling that Nicole (Sarah Polley) is trying to honor the children of the accident in her own way by not trying to cheapen their names in a legal action. The film literalizes this feeling for the audience by adding the Pied Piper story to the concept. In the Pied Piper metaphor, the piper’s forever wishing that he could have gone with the children who have left the town, crystallizes the idea that Nicole feels that she should separate herself from the people who are inadvertently using her for their own gain. This is her form of closure (Landwehr, pg. 217.); if she doesn’t do so she will forever feel like a walking ghost much like how Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood) feels. She has the power that Billy never had. This is in the novel, but it’s not as emotionally powerful or explicit. One does not get a sense that there’s that strong of a connection between Nicole and Billy Ansel, except if they were to consider that their two perspectives are some of the only ones that the reader reads. In the film this connection is more apparent because of Atom Agoyan’s highly ingenious structure, which is not in the novel. When Billy and Nicole have a similar sentiment, Agoyan can cut back and forth between the two of them and create a parallel between the two characters that would be hard to find if the film where told in chronological order, or in the deposition type format found in the novel. Agoyan makes one feel that they are actually watching a town and how citizens of that town connect with one another in times of tragedy, even if they are not in the same scene with one another. The grieving townspeople are emotionally stranded, and at the same time emotionally united. They have an internal form of dignity, and they feel no need to make that public. This enhances the feeling of the book; that feeling is there it’s just not as public about the sentiment.
Both film and novel share a similar purpose in showing the audience/viewer that the world is not as simple as a lawyer’s deposition presents it to a judge. There are many different elements that go into a person’s motivation to do anything. Both Banks and Atom Agoyan don’t believe in showing one character’s viewpoint on a given situation, but instead believe in showing several interpretations of events. A film like A Civil Action or a John Grisham book’s response to anything is to go to court. Once something enters that particular domain, the lawyer becomes the dominating viewpoint for everyone to pay attention to. He’s the writer, and Banks can obviously empathize with this viewpoint. Stevens (Ian Holm), like Russell Banks, phrases his words in a certain way to convince anyone listening to them (Banks a Agoyan section of the DVD); hence the deposition type structure in the novel. What Banks is trying to do in his novel is separate his particular moral standing on his subject matter. He’s trying his best not to be Stevens while at the same time not condemning his actions in anyway. Agoyan concentrates on this complexity in his film and adds another layer; Stevens becomes the film director. (This makes sense considering that film is a visual medium, and that Agoyan is himself a film director.) There’s a love hate aspect to this character that Agoyan has talked about in countless interviews. Stevens in the film is almost manipulating a family to respond a certain way, in much the same way that a director manipulates his actors; it’s all to create a great performance. Yet, he may be doing this for just intentions, just as Nicole is whenever she lies. They are coming at different angles, and yet their actions all amount to the same thing which is simply trying to keep one’s integrity in times of grief; how to empower oneself to get out of grief (Charlie Rose interview with Atom Egoyan.)
What’s wonderful about both the book and film is the fact that the case never reaches the courtroom; the situation never gets a chance to become that fictional. Both the book and film are about being emotionally rooted. The difference between both book and film is that the deposition format is much like a courtroom, in that each party is trying to make their case. Therefore, emotional honesty leaves the picture. In the book, the reader can tell in the case of someone like Dolores Driscoll that she’s trying to make herself look as innocent as possible in the eyes of the lawyer. When she states that:
“No, I am almost sure now that it was an optical illusion or a mirage, a sort of afterimage, maybe, of the dog that I had seen on the Flats and that had frightened and moved me so. But at the time I could not tell the difference. And as I have always done when I’ve had two bad choices and nothing else available to me, I arranged it so that if I erred I’d come out on the side of the angels. Which is to say, I acted as though it was a real dog I saw or a small deer or possibly even a lost child from the Flats, barely a half mile away,” (Banks, pg. 34.) clearly she’s trying to sell an image of herself being responsible that is somewhat farfetched. This doesn’t happen in the film (Dillon, pg. 228.) One is not choosing sides here; it’s more like an emotional tapestry where past, present, and future all commingle to create a character as they actually are; not as what they want to be viewed as.
In the novel, Stevens can create a persona for his reader that paints a false picture of the man. In the film he’s not in charge of how he’s presented. Therefore, the past can interweave in certain points contradicting a given impression that the audience has of him, and that he has of himself. This occurs in the film when Stevens runs into an old friend of his daughter’s. His past that he’s been blocking out of his mind for so long inevitably catches up with him here, and he begins to recount a horrible moment where his daughter almost died from an insect infection. Stephens talking to his daughter’s friend is narrating the shot where Stevens is a young man, holding a knife to his daughter’s throat. He had to do so because if his daughter’s swelling continued, he’d have to perform an emergency tracheotomy on her. This is an indication of how the past present and future are really synonymous moments in this film. Stevens is haunted by this image, because it’s indicative of how he feels a tremendous amount of guilt over being the man who cares so much for his daughter’s life that he will irrevocably damage her in the process. It’s a metaphor for what he’s doing to the dead school children; basically going against their wishes. Before this moment was a scene showing the bus accident; it’s the intercutting that occurs throughout the film, without the adherence to chronological order, that basically blows Mitchell Stevens’ cover in the audience’s eyes. Stevens is trying to create a civil case out of the bus accident out of guilt for the fact that he could never save his daughter.
Another indicative moment is the high overhead shots of a young Stevens in bed with his family which is interspersed throughout the film. It’s a moment of happiness lost, much like what happened in the bus accident. It’s not a coincidence that the one moment occurs after the other; the editing is drawing connections that are not in Banks book. These are moments that show that even though these characters are separated emotionally from one another, they are still connected through their all dealing with grief; this is something the lawyer doesn’t want to remind himself of but is haunted by constantly-hence the constant going back to that particular moment throughout the film. The title shot, which moves horizontally showing Stevens family in bed, is a metaphor for the structure of the film-it’s like a timeline and yet what’s missing on that empty floor that they are laying on is the other grief stricken moments that happen to the others in the film. Hence, the emotional isolation that all these characters are feeling, even if they are experiencing the same emotions. Linear time separates all of them, just as the deposition format separated the characters from the novel.
An interesting dialogue between film and novel occur in the moments when the film differs from the book: examples include the changing of the setting from upstate New York to Canada, and Nicole’s reading of the pied piper of Hamelin story to some of the children who eventually die in the bus accident. For the change of setting, I almost feel that it changes the tone of the story to one of even more mysteriousness than the novel. In my opinion, Canada is a beautifully mysterious place, where the people there are content in the mystery. This would help the feeling of the victims wanting to be left alone with their grief, and not wanting to necessarily know the “truth”. As Agoyan has said, Canada is not as much of a litigious society as the United States is (Charlie Rose Atom Egoyan interview.) They are content in their emotionally frozen states. What’s interesting about this is that Banks writes about this, and its simply more subtly stated and harder to interpret because the reader is so focused in one character’s viewpoint on the situation; unlike the film the reader can’t clearly see a connection between one character’s state and another’s because the viewpoints are not joined together by editing. In the novel, when Billy states that, “The snow continued to fall, and from the perspective of Risa and the others back at the accident site, I must have disappeared into it, just walked straight out of their reality into my own. In a few moments I was utterly alone in the cold snowy world, walking steadily away from everyone else, moving as fast as I could, toward my children and my wife” (Banks, 72.) What he doesn’t realize is that he’s much closer to the townspeople than he thinks; they all share in the same ideal that the lawyer is ostracized from, and the film makes this connection explicit.
No matter the differences between both book and film, the basic emotional core of the story is there and this is what makes The Sweet Hereafter such an interesting case of adaptation. It’s almost as if Atom Egoyan and Russell Banks are looking at the story from different perspectives, and yet both reach the same conclusion. It’s this type of emotional maturity that I think both hope for in a better world; I think this is the message that both are trying to get across to people. It’s also what the story is all about. One doesn’t necessarily have to be on the same page to understand where someone else is coming from. In this instance, The Sweet Hereafter is the perfect book to be adapted into film because it’s all about adapting to someone else’s viewpoint. This is something that the filmmaker and writer and audience go through when encountering this story; moral prejudice about a given character is gone. This is not something that the different characters go through, and that’s because the structure of both book and film have allowed that to be that way. The characters are stranded from each other.
However, even though Nicole and Stevens are contrasting parties in terms of moral beliefs, they are not enemies. Both Banks and Egoyan care more about the integrity of their characters and the sustaining of their integrity, than whether or not they solve their emotional problems in a legalistic manner, because once something enters the courtroom the situation does turn black and white in an instant. Roles have been cast; there’s always a villain and a hero. One shudders to think what this film would be like if it was made in a non-independent vain, with the studio system involved.
This passage by Russell Banks: “They wanted her to stash her pain and guilt where they didn’t have to look at it. But she wasn’t having any of that. Silently, with her head bowed, Dolores was plunking herself down in the exact center of the town’s grief and rage, compelling them by her presence at these funerals to define her. Was she a victim of this tragedy, or was she the cause of it? She had placed herself on the scales of their judgement, but they did not want to judge her. To them, she was both, of course, victim and cause; just as to herself she was both. Like every parent when something terrible happens to his child, Dolores was innocent, and she was guilty” (Banks, 144.) makes me immediately think of the actors in the film. It’s almost as if Sarah Polley and Ian Holm’s faces are synonymous with that novel, and I don’t think this deters from the novels intentions in anyway (usually it’s a bad thing when you read a novel and can’t help but think of the actors in the adaptation because this does take away from the novelist’s intentions.) However, here it’s almost as if these actors were born to play these parts; they basically enhance the book’s intentions. I can’t think of any other actors who could play multilayered characters such as these; they make one aware of how Egoyan and Banks intentions are to not show a black and white world on the screen. Everyone involved in this enterprise has just as much quiet dignity as the roles that they are inhabiting. All one has to do is study the independent nature of Sarah Polley’s career to see that she very much is like the character that she plays in this film. She had a chance to become a big Hollywood actress in Hollywood, and decided to continue making independent films in Canada instead; consequently making much less money than she could have made had she went to Hollywood. The whole idea of this enterprise is independence away from people who think they have your better interests at heart, even if this is the “wrong” thing to do.
Works Cited:
1. Landwehr, Margarete Johanna. Egoyan’s Film Adaptation of Bank’s “the Sweet Hereafter”: “The Pied Piper” as Trauma Narrative and Mise-en-abyme.” Literature Film Quartely, 2008, Vol. 36 Issue 3, pg. 215-222.
2. Dillon, Steven. Lyricism and Accident in the Sweet Hereafter. Literature Film Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 31 Issue 3, pgs. 227-230.
3. Charlie Rose segment on the Sweet Hereafter: Interview with Atom Egoyan.
4. “Before and After The Sweet Hereafter” produced and directed by William M. Patterson and David L. Miller at Roaring Mouse Entertainment Inc.
5. Banks, Russell. The Sweet Hereafter. Harper Perennial, New York, 1991.