00;00;00;21 - 00;00;37;08

Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Hafetz and welcome to Law on Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films. Film, in turn, tells us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll examine a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What legal issues does the film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

00;00;37;11 - 00;00;59;07

Jonathan Hafetz

And most importantly, what does the film teach us about the law and about the larger social and cultural context in which it operates? Our film today is The Sweet Hereafter, a 1997 film adapted for the screen and directed by Atom Egoyan. The film describes the impact of a tragic school bus accident that caused the death of 14 children in a small Canadian town.

00;00;59;12 - 00;01;19;02

Jonathan Hafetz

The film is based on Russell Banks 1991 novel of the same name, which was in turn based on a real life bus crash in Texas. The film centers on personal injury lawyer Mitchell Stevens, played by Ian Holm, who travels to the town from a large city after the accident in an attempt to persuade the parents of the children to bring a negligence lawsuit.

00;01;19;07 - 00;01;43;07

Jonathan Hafetz

The controversy generated by the lawsuit ripples through the town and is explored through several characters, including Nicole, played by Sarah Polley, the teenage girl who is left paralyzed from the waist down by the accident. Dolores Driscoll, played by Gabrielle Rose, the bus driver on that fateful day who survives with minor injuries, and various parents who have sharply conflicting views on the lawsuit.

00;01;43;09 - 00;02;08;28

Jonathan Hafetz

The Sweet Hereafter, however, is much more than a story about tort litigation. It explores larger philosophical questions around justice, community norms, and the role of law in addressing life's most painful tragedies. My guest to discuss The Sweet Hereafter is Sean Patrick Donnelly. Sean is a professor of law at Thomas Rivers University in British Columbia, Canada, where he also served previously as associate dean.

00;02;09;01 - 00;02;27;22

Jonathan Hafetz

Sean's research interests include legal history, comparative law, legal theory, and Irish history and politics. Sean also teaches a law and film class in British Columbia and has previously taught this class in Ireland. And he maintains a terrific and encyclopedic law and film list on the website Letterboxd. Sean, welcome.

00;02;27;28 - 00;02;29;10

Seán Patrick Donlan

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

00;02;29;13 - 00;02;41;24

Jonathan Hafetz

So the central character is Mitchell Stevens, played by Ian Holmes, who comes to the town after the accident to try to unite the grieving parents in a lawsuit. What can you tell us about the context for such suits?

00;02;41;27 - 00;03;00;18

Seán Patrick Donlan

Well, I think they're largely the same, I should say. First of all, that I'm not an expert on the area, but I think they're largely the same as they are in the States. And so I think a lot of what is happening in the film would be very familiar to American audiences and American lawyers. The focus is on a class action related to negligent infliction of emotional harm.

00;03;00;21 - 00;03;17;03

Seán Patrick Donlan

And as you know, I think that that's less central to the film than it might seem to be, but it certainly is the motivation in a fairly straightforward sense, for the actions of Stevens in the film. There are other, deeper motivations for those actions, but it's his job there, if you like.

00;03;17;05 - 00;03;34;28

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think you can see this kind of dual nature of the practical reality Stevens faces in trying to bring the suit and some of the larger philosophical questions in the scenes or the various scenes where Stevens is trying to sign up. Plaintiffs. Right. He needs people to retain him in order for the suit to go forward.

00;03;35;00 - 00;03;47;27

Jonathan Hafetz

And in one of the scenes, Steven goes to the home of Hartley and Wanda Otto, who have just lost their adopted son, bear. In the accident, and he makes his pitch to that.

00;03;48;00 - 00;04;12;20

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You're angry, aren't you, Mrs. Otto? That's why I'm here. To give your anger a voice. To be your weapon against whoever caused that bus to go off the road. Delores, it's my belief that the law was doing exactly what she's done for years. Besides the school board's insurance until Lawrence was minimal. A few million at most. No, the really deep pockets are in the town or the company that made the bus.

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

So you think someone else caused the accident, Mr. Stevens?

00;04;16;02 - 00;04;42;15

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Mrs. Otto, there is no such thing as an accident. The word doesn't mean anything to me as far as I'm concerned. Somebody, somewhere made a decision to cut a corner. Some corrupt agency or corporation. I counted the cost variance between a ten and boat and $1 million out-of-court settlement. They decided to sacrifice a few lives for the difference.

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

That's what's done. Mrs. Otto. I've seen it happen so many times before. But the lawyer said she hit a patch of ice and lost control of the brass. Mr. on up. How long is the Lord has been driving that bus? How many times did she steer clear of danger in what happened that morning? Somebody calculated ahead of time what it would cost to sacrifice safety.

00;05;07;24 - 00;05;19;10

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

It's the darkest, most cynical thing you can imagine. But it's absolutely true. And now it's up to me to ensure moral responsibility in a society.

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

So you're just the thing we need so that would want us to believe. Mr. Stevens, that you know what's best for us.

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You listen to me, Mrs. Otto. And you listen very carefully. I do know what's best. Believe me, as we're sitting here talking, the town or the school board or the manufacturer of that bus are lining up a battery of their own lawyers to negotiate with people as grief stricken as yourselves. And that makes me very, very mad. That's why I came all the way up here.

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

If everyone had done their job with integrity, your son would be alive and safely in school this morning. I promise that I will pursue and reveal who it was did not do their job. Who is responsible for this tragedy? And then, in your name? What's his name? In the name of whoever decides to join us, I will so sue for negligence.

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Plead well. The first to go to jail, but risk his life. What?

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Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

It's unlikely that anyone will go to prison. Mrs. Otto. But he or his company will pay in other ways. We must make them pay now for the money or for the compensation for the loss of your boy. That can't be done for the protection of other innocent children.

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Jonathan Hafetz

What does it seem? Suggest you about Stephen's approach and the challenges he faces, and his view that there is no such thing as an accident.

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Seán Patrick Donlan

But I do think the scene is critical. It's maybe the most critical in the film, but in part, that's because we hear all the worst, if you like, of the ambulance chaser, we hear somebody who's talking about representing the families not in their grief. They can't help them with that, but in their anger and directing that anger.

00;07;16;27 - 00;07;37;21

Seán Patrick Donlan

He says he knows what's best and that his job is to. I forget the exact quote, but to tend to the moral community, something of that sort and that he's very, very mad, very angry that he'll sue for negligence until they bleed. Which brings to mind other threats, which we'll talk about later made to him. But it also says, and I think this is often lost in the legal commentary.

00;07;37;24 - 00;07;57;17

Seán Patrick Donlan

It also says that he knows that winning the lawsuit, for the families is not going to put things right. It can't be enough. It can't compensate for their loss. And he makes very explicit in both the film and in the novel. And maybe I'll say a thing or two about the novel just a moment. Well, maybe I'll say that now.

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Seán Patrick Donlan

I mean, my, reading of the film might be very different if I hadn't made the choice, maybe the mistake to read the novel because it's so informs and complicates the film that I find it impossible to separate the two at this point. But in both the film and in more detail in the novel, he says very clearly that what he's trying to do is protect children for the future.

00;08;19;05 - 00;08;42;15

Seán Patrick Donlan

And in fact, in the novel, Wanda is pregnant. I don't think she's pregnant in the film. So it's not, abstract or hypothetical, at least in his mind. I think it's quite straightforward, practical, and I think sincere. Again, I think that's often been missed by some of the legal analysis of the film. But there's little reason to think that for all the performance he puts on as a lawyer, that he's not actually sincere.

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Seán Patrick Donlan

And we see a lot of his relationship with his daughter in the film. And again, I think there's little to suggest that he was a bad parent or that he did anything particularly wrong and that he doesn't genuinely love, his daughter. But that comes through repeatedly in the film and in a number of ways.

00;08;58;23 - 00;09;13;00

Jonathan Hafetz

It's really interesting, even though he's viewed as sort of in some of the commentaries in The Ambulance Chaser and prophet doesn't seem to be what's motivating him. And there's a lot of personal things that are going on there that are driving Stevens, and I think that really complicates the picture, for sure.

00;09;13;00 - 00;09;37;18

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I think there are lots of parallels as well between different characters in the film, especially parents and children. That's true about Stevens and his daughter Zoe. Sam and Nicole, we'll talk about obviously later, but also Billy and his children. It may well be that Stevens is living a fairly nice existence, but he's also again tending to his daughter and flying here and there to take care of her to rescue her, and no doubt to give her money.

00;09;37;18 - 00;09;50;05

Seán Patrick Donlan

And so he's making the money by ambulance. Chasing itself serves a practical and arguably moral function. Again, I think that sort of thing will come up as well with other parents in the film, maybe particularly with Sam and Nicole, but I don't know. We'll get to that.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Absolutely. And just to kind of dwell on the scene a little bit between Hartley and Wanda. Otto and Stevens, one of the commentaries by Professor Timothy O'Neill, who draws on the legal philosopher Judith Skylar's distinction between misfortune and injustice. And I think this idea reverberates throughout the film. So, referencing Sklar, O'Neill writes of misfortune is a dreadful event that's caused by external forces of nature.

00;10;16;14 - 00;10;47;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Because it could not be prevented. People must resign themselves to their suffering and injustice. On the other hand, this disaster brought about by human agency because it could have been prevented. People express outrage, assign blame and seek relief. Do you think this is a helpful lens to kind of view the film and the themes it explores this tension between misfortune, a kind of a divine act or an act of fate and injustice, something that's caused in whole or in part by human beings and wanting some kind of remedy.

00;10;47;28 - 00;11;11;23

Seán Patrick Donlan

Oh, absolutely. There's there's no question. And it's central to both in the novel, into the film. I think it is interesting because in the, in the novel there is far more complexity, I think, about what has happened. And I mean, it starts off with the bus driver talking about her recollections and how they are unclear, and she doesn't quite know what happened, even if we don't think that she's at fault in the novel either.

00;11;12;00 - 00;11;31;12

Seán Patrick Donlan

Whereas in the film, which changes a number of things with respect to the bus driver, but all we really hear about is an ice patch. And when we see the accident happened, we see it from afar. We don't really see anything inside the bus. Or that might explain what happened in the novel. There's a mention of the possibility that there was a dog at the moment that had happened.

00;11;31;15 - 00;11;52;13

Seán Patrick Donlan

Well, as the ice and so on. That's not clear in the film, but I do think that that distinction is critical. I think it's also obviously been one that's been important to legal analysis of the film, Mitchell says, where Stevens says rather that there's no such thing as an accident. It's interesting early in the film when the film begins, and it's something that, again, added to the novel.

00;11;52;19 - 00;12;11;08

Seán Patrick Donlan

Stevens is stuck in a car wash, and at the same time he's trying to communicate with his daughter. So there's all sorts of complexity there about communication problems with his daughter, with problems in movement across space as well. But he also says while he's calling the car wash, he says, I've had an accident. He's calling someone to try to get him out.

00;12;11;11 - 00;12;37;29

Seán Patrick Donlan

And ironically, it's not an accident. I mean, it's almost certainly something, you know, God didn't do it. Something went wrong mechanically, and he gets stuck and he has to climb out of the car while the car wash is running. But I think the distinction is important. And as we'll talk about Billy in particular, but others who try to conceptualize what happened as misfortune and act of God, it is problematic because the only way to know that something is a misfortune is, in fact, to investigate whether or not there's an explanation.

00;12;38;02 - 00;13;02;06

Seán Patrick Donlan

And so in many ways, and again, I know we'll get to it. But Billy aborts that or attempts to abort that discussion, and the course lies ensure that it doesn't happen. And so we don't actually know what occurred. So it might appear to be a misfortune or an act of God, but we don't know, because the seriousness of the situation hasn't been such that an investigation has been carried out that would determine whether or not something happened that would explain it.

00;13;02;08 - 00;13;17;03

Seán Patrick Donlan

So we don't know. And it to some extent it is fair to say Stevens's personal vendetta is he is chancing his arm. He's hoping that there's some explanation. There may not be, but we don't know unless that investigation occurs and it's aborted by the actions. Again, a billion others.

00;13;17;05 - 00;13;33;26

Jonathan Hafetz

It's interesting how Stevens frames it. I mean, his view is there's no such thing as an accident, right? And I think he references a couple possible causes. Maybe the bus was faulty. There was a mechanical problem in the bus. The guardrail wasn't strong enough. But in any event, there's been a grievous harm. And his job is to kind of move forward.

00;13;33;26 - 00;13;59;06

Jonathan Hafetz

He does reference, though, that the town and the bus company, they've all got lawyers. We don't see that. We don't see the lawyer for the other side until the end, when we have Nicole's deposition and the kind of climactic moment which we'll talk about later in the podcast. But there is a sense where Stevens is trying to move forward and to affix liability to someone with the deep pockets of the town or the bus company.

00;13;59;09 - 00;14;11;11

Jonathan Hafetz

And Stevens just says, I think when he's talking to some of the parents and maybe Nicole, that he's just doing his job right, this is what he's supposed to do, and then everyone else is doing their job. So there is that element of it as well.

00;14;11;18 - 00;14;34;03

Seán Patrick Donlan

Well, absolutely. Again, because there aren't deep pockets there, the city and the others are simply likely to pay and have done with it to move on. And certainly Billy's role is a complicated one. I think people have read his actions in the film and maybe in the book to a lesser extent, as a defense of community and trying to shield the community from Stevens and this, you know, this, this ambulance chaser.

00;14;34;04 - 00;14;54;07

Seán Patrick Donlan

I think that's reading a lot into what's going on. Billy's defense of community, both in the film but also in the novel, it is a richer thing is, I suggest, largely about his own attempt to move on from what's happened in the film. It's hinted at novel, there's more discussion, but he's lost his wife, not long before this.

00;14;54;07 - 00;15;11;09

Seán Patrick Donlan

Now he's lost his children. In the novel in particular, he turns to drink and he simply wants to get away from the situation. There isn't really an articulated defense of community, he says. You know, I want to help you out. That's what we used to do. This was a community, something like that at the end. But it's more rhetorical than real.

00;15;11;09 - 00;15;34;26

Seán Patrick Donlan

And Billy also has things to protect as well. And in terms of, secrets from, from an investigation, there's the sort of standard small town trope of, you know, hidden secrets that are exposed by maybe by an outsider. And Billy's fighting against that as much as is anything communitarian. He's defending perhaps himself. He is having an affair with another character in the in the film, he's talking to her.

00;15;34;26 - 00;15;52;21

Seán Patrick Donlan

And in fact, in the novel, thinking of sex. At the moment that the bus crash occurs, there's a lot that he's dealing with, but there's much less of a recent elaborate defense of community then I think some people have suggested, and there are other nuances and complexities with respect to Billy. His relationship to Nicole is is a complicated one.

00;15;52;24 - 00;16;13;26

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. Billy and Salt Lake by Bruce Greenwood is important, a critical character. And I think, as you're saying, that maybe more in the film than in the book is viewed as the sort of voice of the community in opposition to the loss. And it's a more complicated picture than legal commentators have suggested. But the film, there are a couple of scenes right where Billy says we need to rely on the community rather than lawyers, right?

00;16;13;26 - 00;16;31;09

Jonathan Hafetz

In one scene, he confronts very angrily, Stevens, right. Stevens is looking at 90s. He's gone to look at the bus, the remains on the bus to kind of do an investigation, to look at the bus that was involved in the crash. Stevens finds him. He confronts him. There's some angry words exchanged.

00;16;31;11 - 00;16;52;26

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

I'm here about your children, Mr. Russell. My name. Mr.. I don't want to know your, but I understand. No, you don't get the fuck away from the bus. I can help you. Nonetheless, you can raise the dead. Mitchell Stevens, Esquire. Tell me, would you be likely to sue me if I was to beat you right now? I mean, beat you so bad you pissed blood and couldn't walk for a month because that's what I'm about to do.

00;16;52;29 - 00;17;03;27

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

No, seriously, I swear you'll leave us alone. Stevens. You leave. The people of this town want. You can't help. You can help each other.

00;17;04;00 - 00;17;25;09

Jonathan Hafetz

In another scene, Billy visits Sam, who's Nicole's father, at his house, and warns him about the dangers of the lawsuit and urges him not to support it. And you can see the tension between Billy and Sam in this exchange, and Sam's desire to keep going with the lawsuit because he says he needs the money.

00;17;25;12 - 00;17;43;08

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

What brings you out tonight? Well, I must return the truth and says about this lawsuit that you got yourself involved with. What? I'd like you to drop the darn thing. I don't see how that concerns you. But what does concern me? Don't watch it. It's a whole lot of people in this town got involved with lawsuits. Hardly unique here, Billy.

00;17;43;10 - 00;18;02;26

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You know, if you do drop the case and the others are going to come to their senses and follow your good, sensible parents, you and Mary, people suspect, you know, Billy, you can't drop a lawsuit. I mean, you know how much we need the money. Why? You got the money from divorces, insurance with the school board. We all did.

00;18;02;28 - 00;18;18;03

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

It's not enough if the hospital bills for the call. Well, I'll help you pay for Nicole. That's what you're really talking about. I'll even give you the money I got for my kids. That's what we used to do. Remember? You help each other because this was a community.

00;18;18;05 - 00;18;38;01

Jonathan Hafetz

But as you also say, Billy does have some other motives, including to try to keep his extramarital affair potentially out of the situation that might get exposed if he was part of litigation, that he was on the phone with Lisa, who he's having the affair with before the accident. And right. Billy is, of course, driving behind the bus.

00;18;38;01 - 00;18;59;04

Jonathan Hafetz

Right. He follows the bus every day, the school bus every day, because his children sit in the back and he waves at them and sees them. So he sees the bus go off the road. He's a direct witness to the accident, and as you suggested, he doesn't want to have to go through this again. He's going to get subpoenaed, and the other lawyers are going to then require him to talk and he just wants the whole thing to go away.

00;18;59;06 - 00;19;15;03

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

So stay out of it. Both tried to stay out of it, Sam. Turns out that's not so easy as you've gone and got yourself this lawyer, Mitchell Stevens. So, I mean, lots of folks got lawyers, but he's the one who's going to subpoena me, Sam. He's going to force me to testify in court. Came by the garage this afternoon.

00;19;15;05 - 00;19;17;03

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Give me that slip of paper. Now.

00;19;17;06 - 00;19;21;09

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Why would he do that? I mean, you didn't have anything to do with the accident.

00;19;21;09 - 00;19;32;20

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Because I was driving behind the bus. I saw it happen. Now, that son of a bitch does subpoena me. If he forces me to go over all this again, then all those other lawyers are going to line up behind him and try and do the same thing.

00;19;32;22 - 00;19;38;03

Jonathan Hafetz

Do you think the film does, though? Try to really use Billy to kind of set up this conflict between law and community?

00;19;38;03 - 00;20;00;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

I think that's there. I think it's more incidental then central in the sense that it may be that the idea of misfortune and injustice is more central, whatever about the law, and certainly in the novel. And I was reminding myself of this last night, looking at it again, he does talk at some length about how people want to assign blame, and they want to cite it here and here and here and here and here.

00;20;00;27 - 00;20;27;20

Seán Patrick Donlan

And that's not appropriate. I suppose what's unclear is why it's not appropriate or why he treats it as something that's not rational. When I think a better reading or more likely reading go to the film in the novel is that Billy again is simply, fleeing. He's paralyzed by the losses, the number of losses he's faced. There are a number of shots in the film of Stevens in his family, and some of the most poetic elements of the film are in those shots.

00;20;27;22 - 00;20;45;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

But Billy gets some attention, too, in that respect. And we see, I think it's the only flashback, probably of any of the victims. We see his wife with the children before her death, and it's something that's barely mentioned in the film, but it's lovely. Billy was there when the crash happened. We see him identifying the victims on site.

00;20;46;00 - 00;21;07;07

Seán Patrick Donlan

You know, he's suffered a massive loss. What's interesting is in the confrontation because it is a confrontation with Stevens, and maybe I should say that one of the nice things about the film and complicating things about the film is that it is told with multiple non-linear narratives, and that's a feature of egoyan's, work. And it's an interesting way to handle novel.

00;21;07;07 - 00;21;28;16

Seán Patrick Donlan

That itself is a series of monologues by different characters. But the confrontation with Stevens, building Stevens. Stevens has been looking at the bus and he's filming the bus, and there's some interesting shots again, where the like the windows, the bus look like teeth of a monster or something, and it's pretty dark stuff. He sees really approaching. And he hides behind a sign, possibly because he doesn't know what's about to happen.

00;21;28;16 - 00;21;45;12

Seán Patrick Donlan

But then when Billy confronts him, and again, it's more an anger than an argument, he tells him he will beat him until he bleeds again. Words that are similar to what Stevens says he will do. You know, they both have anger. They both have anger because of the loss, the different types of losses that they've suffered with their children.

00;21;45;15 - 00;22;06;29

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I suppose what I think is, is critical, to both the film and the novel. And understandably, the novel has more room to articulate. But at the end of that confrontation, Stevens starts talking about how we've all lost our children. It's not particularly lengthy, but Billy leaves and Stevens is still speaking to Thin Air. It's very theatrical in a sense.

00;22;07;07 - 00;22;22;05

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

When we're telling you this. Mr.. It's because we've all lost our children and death to us and killing each other in the streets and wander comatose, something else, something terrible, has happened. It's taken the children away.

00;22;22;07 - 00;22;40;10

Seán Patrick Donlan

It's a shorter version of what's very lengthy or substantial in the book, and it's about how we've all lost our children to violence, to drugs, to possibly to Vietnam, to divorce, to TV. In fact, he says in the novel, the best we can do for them and for ourselves is rage against what took them, although we don't quite know what took them.

00;22;40;10 - 00;23;00;16

Seán Patrick Donlan

That's clear. So, in short, the loss of the children in the crash in the film is just the most explicit harm suffered by, if you like modern parents. Stevens loss of his daughter to drugs and there's a hint of porn and other things is no less real. It's another negligent infliction of emotional harm without a clear cause, either in law or reality.

00;23;00;18 - 00;23;25;20

Seán Patrick Donlan

And so it is central. When Billy later on does visit Nicole and her family, you know, he does argue that, you know, we need to let this go. You know, I'll help you. But again, I don't think it's particularly rich and ironically, or maybe not ironically, but when Sam the father speaks to Billy as he leaves, basically Sam is saying, and Sam is by no means a moral model in the film, but he basically says, we're all trying to get on with things, Billy, you need to do the same.

00;23;25;22 - 00;23;28;25

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I don't know that he's wrong in the context of the film.

00;23;28;28 - 00;23;57;03

Jonathan Hafetz

I want to go back for a second to the aftermath of the scene with Stevens and Billy. The angry confrontation is, as you said. It then moves to a monologue by Stevens about children and how we've all lost our children, like during the scene. That's actually during multiple scenes when Stevens is talking to the parents and trying to sign them up for the lawsuit his daughter calls, there's another anguished cry for help or for money for his daughter, who's lost to drug addiction.

00;23;57;06 - 00;24;16;15

Jonathan Hafetz

Right? And he's interrupted almost by has to take the call, right. And deal with that. And so it happens during the confrontation with Billy. And Billy says, why are you telling me this? But in any event, right after the confrontation ends, his daughter Steven's daughter Zoe calls Stevens back. Stevens takes the call and she reveals some additional information.

00;24;16;20 - 00;24;27;01

Jonathan Hafetz

Zoe has just told him that she now has Aids, which at the time the film was made or set, was basically like a death sentence.

00;24;27;03 - 00;24;35;15

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Cut call for Zoe. Will you accept the charges, daddy? Yes, I'm calling because I've got some news for you, daddy.

00;24;35;18 - 00;24;40;08

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Some big news. Those. Don't you want to hear?

00;24;40;11 - 00;24;42;21

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Yes. Give me the news, Zoe.

00;24;42;23 - 00;25;00;22

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You always think you know what I'm going to say before I say it, don't you, daddy? You always think you're one step ahead of me. The lawyer. Yesterday I went to sell my blood. They wouldn't take my blood. Do you know what that means, daddy? Just a register, I tested positive. Welcome to hard times, daddy.

00;25;00;24 - 00;25;09;04

Jonathan Hafetz

I think, as goes to your point, just sort of intensifying this larger theme about parents and children and grief and loss.

00;25;09;07 - 00;25;23;00

Seán Patrick Donlan

That's right. And again, the novel is set in 1991. Things were probably even worse at that point, and it's even more explicit in the book, again, that it's Aids in the, the film a few years later. I don't know the state of medicine at the time, but I think, I think it was, largely a death sentence.

00;25;23;03 - 00;25;44;04

Seán Patrick Donlan

And he's finding out at the same time he's visiting the community. There are a number of changes to the story for the film, and one of them is a flight that Stevens is taking in the film that set two years after the events of the film, and he meets a childhood friend, Zoe, his daughter. And so there's an opportunity as a result, for him to say a lot of things that would otherwise be very difficult to explain in a film.

00;25;44;04 - 00;26;02;07

Seán Patrick Donlan

But he's going to rescue her again. And so it's unclear what's happening there. And I think maybe that's intentional. He talks about going to rescue Zoe again. We don't know if in fact she was lying earlier about having Aids. It's unlikely, given the way it was presented to us, but it's not impossible. But he's going to rescue her yet again.

00;26;02;09 - 00;26;20;18

Seán Patrick Donlan

And while in the novel, he talks about her revelation that she has Aids is a moment of truth because he will know whether she's lying or not where he doesn't know much of the time, both in the book and in the film, he still pledges that he will do whatever it takes. And so it is an important thing for him to know whether it's true or not.

00;26;20;18 - 00;26;37;04

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I think we need to remember that in terms of what he's doing with the community as well. He actually does want truth, I think, even if his motivations are anger and loss. But even if he knew that his daughter, in fact had been lying to him about Aids, he would continue to support her at great personal and financial cost.

00;26;37;07 - 00;27;06;11

Jonathan Hafetz

I think some of the ironies to the painful ironies to come through in the scenes on the airplane where he's talking to Zoe's friend, friend of the family who's doing, you know, clearly quite well. And there's a lot of these kind of flashbacks or discussions, at least one flashback to a scene where Zoe was three at the time, and they were up at a cottage somewhere, and she had been, it turns out, bitten by, there's like a nest of black widow spiders under the mattress, and she's been bitten and they have to get her to the hospital.

00;27;06;12 - 00;27;25;14

Jonathan Hafetz

It's like 40 minutes away when they call the doctor, the doctor says, hopefully you'll make a try to keep her calm. But if she's not breathing, you're going to have to basically perform a tracheotomy. And you get to this really poignant scene where they're driving and Zoe, like H3 or whatever, is looking up, and you see her looking at the Stevens eye, and you see that knife that he has ready to go in case she stops breathing.

00;27;25;14 - 00;27;37;01

Jonathan Hafetz

But it really suggests the sacrifices that he would make and the loving and also kind of like what happened and what went wrong, just like what went wrong for all those parents. So I think it's a really kind of powerful addition to the film.

00;27;37;03 - 00;28;00;22

Seán Patrick Donlan

I agree, and the story itself is in the novel, but the way it's presented in the film is again, for lack of a better word, poetic. In fact, the film starts with images. It's not clear to us what's going on initially, but it's that flashback to the point where she was three. It's, you know, a very young couple and this three year old daughter and there's something universal and timeless about the image.

00;28;00;22 - 00;28;21;17

Seán Patrick Donlan

It's almost nativity like, in fact. But the story comes up later. He tells it to Allison on the plane. Yeah, they're flying first class, so she must have done well enough. And planes, as you say rightly, that he was two people in in that situation. He was the loving father who was singing nursery rhymes and songs to the daughter to keep her calm because she didn't know what was going on.

00;28;21;19 - 00;28;40;05

Seán Patrick Donlan

And at the same time, he was ready to cut her throat open for the tracheotomy. If necessary. With all the pain, both for the child and the parents, that that would have involved. And I do think it is central to the film and little touches when he finishes telling the story. He's in a bit of a trance and it sounds theatrical.

00;28;40;05 - 00;28;52;12

Seán Patrick Donlan

It's not actually in the film, but he touches his throat and he's clearly still hurting very deeply about this daughter who is not dead, who is alive, but who is dead to him in many ways.

00;28;52;15 - 00;29;19;16

Jonathan Hafetz

Want to talk about Nicole for a minute? I think probably the climactic moment of the film, at least from a plot perspective and possibly an emotional perspective as well. There's so many great emotional moments in the film where Nicole is giving the deposition right. Stevens wants her to go last in the series of depositions, so she's called. She was this teenage girl, very talented musician who is paralyzed from the waist down in the accident.

00;29;19;16 - 00;29;37;14

Jonathan Hafetz

Right. And so she goes to her deposition. At that point, you get this painful scene of her father, Sam. It's also revealed she has an incestuous relationship with is now kind of carrying her from the car up the steps to the room where they're going to do the deposition. And she's the critical witness, and she doesn't like the lawsuit.

00;29;37;15 - 00;29;53;17

Jonathan Hafetz

She made that clear. She's reservations. She expresses reservations. Earlier, when Billie and her father, Sam, had the altercation about the suit. But she says, I'm going to tell the truth. And so she starts to testify and she lies.

00;29;53;20 - 00;29;59;05

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Well, then, now that your memory seems to be clearer, can you tell us what else you observed at that time.

00;29;59;07 - 00;30;00;21

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

I was scared.

00;30;00;23 - 00;30;06;07

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Why were you scared? This is before the accident. Nicole. You understand what I'm asking?

00;30;06;09 - 00;30;08;11

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Yes, I understand why.

00;30;08;11 - 00;30;10;11

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Were you scared?

00;30;10;13 - 00;30;13;00

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Boris was driving too fast.

00;30;13;02 - 00;30;17;04

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Mrs. Driscoll was driving too fast. What made you think that Nicole?

00;30;17;07 - 00;30;20;00

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Speedometer. It was down hill that.

00;30;20;03 - 00;30;22;18

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You could see the speedometer.

00;30;22;20 - 00;30;30;09

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Yes, I looked, I remember clearly now. It seemed we were going too fast down the hill and I was scared.

00;30;30;11 - 00;30;34;17

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

How fast would you say Mrs. Driscoll was going? The best of your recollection?

00;30;34;19 - 00;30;36;28

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

72 miles an hour.

00;30;37;01 - 00;30;40;12

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

72 miles an hour. You're sure this.

00;30;40;14 - 00;30;41;29

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Positive.

00;30;42;01 - 00;30;48;00

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

So you believe the bus driven by Mrs. Driscoll was traveling at 72 miles an hour at this time?

00;30;48;03 - 00;30;53;06

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

I told you I was putting. The speedometer was large and easy to read from wireless.

00;30;53;08 - 00;30;54;28

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You saw the speedometer?

00;30;55;00 - 00;30;56;13

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Yes.

00;30;56;15 - 00;31;01;24

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Did you say anything to Mrs. Driscoll? No. Why not?

00;31;01;27 - 00;31;06;26

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Because I was scared and there wasn't time.

00;31;06;28 - 00;31;08;21

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

It was time?

00;31;08;23 - 00;31;12;27

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

No, because the best one off the road and crashed.

00;31;12;29 - 00;31;14;22

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You remember this?

00;31;14;25 - 00;31;21;09

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

Yes, I do now. Now that I'm telling you.

00;31;21;12 - 00;31;41;08

Jonathan Hafetz

And so, after Nicole provided your testimony, it's clear that the suit's over. Delores has does not have deep pockets. And basically, there's no liability, no blame that could be affixed on anyone else. So why does Nicole live? What do you make of her motives and the kind of significance of her likely altering the reality of what happened?

00;31;41;11 - 00;31;56;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

If I could step back, first of all, to say that the young Nicole is played by a young Sarah Polley. I haven't lived in the States for some time now, but Sarah Polley is very well known in Canada and I think well known globally, but at this point more as a director than an actress. And she she did a lot of acting as a as a young person.

00;31;57;00 - 00;32;15;23

Seán Patrick Donlan

This was an important role. But she's directed a number of films as well, including one that is a documentary about her own complicated relationship with her. Obviously father's to leave it open for anyone wants to to explore, but also she wrote a book, she wrote a film, adapted a film herself called Women Talking. And again, ironic is not the right word.

00;32;15;23 - 00;32;36;11

Seán Patrick Donlan

But given the importance of talking in the film and how it's important that we talk is something that Nicole says or Stephen says a number of times. But Women Talking was itself based very loosely on a real event and is a very good film. I would strongly encourage people. See. So it's they're probably as well known in part of her reputation is from this film.

00;32;36;11 - 00;32;57;28

Seán Patrick Donlan

But there's a complicated story here between Nicole and her father, Sam. And when we're introduced to Nicole, she's singing at fairground, you know, sort of state fair type thing, in the States. And we see somebody admiring the singing. It's not clear what his ages could be. The boyfriend. It's hard to know. And then we realize it's her father at the time, you know, it's like, oh, that's sweet.

00;32;57;28 - 00;33;20;06

Seán Patrick Donlan

What a loving, family. And he's very supportive. And there is a little clue. I didn't notice it myself for a while, but there are references to the children as animals. Not in a negative sense, but sort of innocent sense by Dolores in the scene where in the first scene where Sam and Nicole are walking off in one direction, there's a farmer leading a cow or calf by rope in the other.

00;33;20;06 - 00;33;43;25

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I can't imagine that's accidental, you know, the coincidental. But we later discover, again, they're complications here with the relationship with Billy. I'll get back to you in a moment, but we see Nicole's father pick her up from babysitting for Billy, and they get home, and there's a hesitation. Absolutely. But it's not clear what it means. And then there's, a cut to a scene in a hayloft with lots of candles around, which itself is pretty strange.

00;33;44;02 - 00;34;10;04

Seán Patrick Donlan

And the two, Sam and Nicole, are in what is clearly a romantic or sexual situation. And, at least in that scene, she kisses him, rather than the other way around. I have heard that this is supposed to be her imagining of the scene in part. Again, you can imagine so many candles would not make a lot of sense and a halo, but even so, it's reimagining of this event and suggest something of the complexity of feelings that she must have had.

00;34;10;11 - 00;34;27;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

Do we know that that's happened? And then when the accident occurs and she's paralyzed, one of the lines that, you know, is well known in the film is she's a wheelchair girl. Now, her father prepares the room in a very gaudy princess style. There's discussion about how he's painted the ramp red, and then she wants it green or something like that.

00;34;27;27 - 00;34;50;10

Seán Patrick Donlan

I can't remember exactly, but it is true that she's clearly angered or angry about the situation in general. And, you know, there's some talk about locks in the room and different things like that. But Billy's visit and what she overhears does seem to convince her, both in the novel and in the film, to take the opportunity to lie and the way that's presented by a number of people.

00;34;50;10 - 00;35;11;08

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I'm not saying it's wrong. And, you know, it certainly represents a larger number that people may be on, if you like, on my side of the reading. But, is that in her lying at the end that she's taking revenge on her father and getting her own back? In some sense, it's I've seen things that make it sound transformative, and I think that the director clearly says as much in an interview I heard.

00;35;11;10 - 00;35;39;19

Seán Patrick Donlan

But he clearly had his thumb very aggressively on the scale here. And the final scene is one where that idea that it's transformative and triumphant is hard to miss, even if it's in fact really complicated under the surface. So the complexities with Billy are numerous. First of all, we haven't really talked about it, but there is the introduction to the film of the Pied Piper narrative, and we see her initially with the children, Billy children reading The Pied Piper, and a lot of people like that.

00;35;39;19 - 00;35;56;14

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I do think it contributes to the poetic aspects of the film, that music to the film is almost medieval. It certainly that's intentional. I think the story actually complicates the film in ways that are problematic, but we see her taking care of the children, but we also see her playing dress up, in effect with the clothes of Billy's widow.

00;35;56;14 - 00;36;11;09

Seán Patrick Donlan

And again, from the dialog in the film, we know that he must have said to do that. It was okay. She wasn't simply doing it. But there's an odd conversation when he returns about how his wife would have given close to her anyway when she outgrew them, and Nicole even says outgrew them. You know, like she's an adult woman.

00;36;11;12 - 00;36;27;28

Seán Patrick Donlan

And so there's this odd tension in that scene where Billy clearly is also remembering the loss of his wife, but where he's treating his wife, if you like, as a young person, and he's got this young person in front of them. This is just before the scene with Nicole and Sam or Father that it's incestuous, but she takes some of the clothes.

00;36;27;28 - 00;36;56;06

Seán Patrick Donlan

She's wearing some of the clothes during the crash. And in fact, both in the novel, in the film, Risa, who's the character that Billy's having an affair with, suggests that that may have somehow caused the accident. But there's this strange sense in which she's playing mother to the children. She's wearing the wife's clothes, and when Billy does visit her family and makes his argument and Nicole changes her mind about what she's going to do, there is a sense in which it's more of the action of a jilted lover, then of an angry daughter.

00;36;56;11 - 00;37;16;12

Seán Patrick Donlan

I don't mean to suggest that they're mutually exclusive, and certainly in the book especially, it's clear that she was suicidal. Her situation was very dark in a way that we don't see as much in the film, although we can imagine. All of which is to say, I think that her motives for lying, again, are not necessarily to defend the community or to hurt her father, but or more complicated.

00;37;16;15 - 00;37;33;13

Seán Patrick Donlan

One other note, and one of the things interesting about the filming set in Canada, is that some of the medical concerns would be less intense than they would, of course, in the States. But there is a sense in which Sam, for all his twisted motives, may actually have been concerned about finances, and the fact that they don't get an award hurts.

00;37;33;13 - 00;37;53;26

Seán Patrick Donlan

Not Sam, as much as it hurts Nicole. And so it seems to me a very blunt response to the incestuous relationship now. And we said that it occurred to me that there are a number of films, especially maybe that focus on women where other mechanisms don't exist, to object, to change things, that more violent responses might be.

00;37;53;26 - 00;38;09;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

If not, okay, understandable. There's a film called A Question of Silence set in the Netherlands that is similar, where three women kill somebody in a shop who's just been unpleasant to them. Did you deserve it? No. But the suggestion is that the system is such that they finally snapped. And, you know, we could talk about Thelma and Louise and a lot of other films.

00;38;09;27 - 00;38;34;13

Seán Patrick Donlan

So Nicole's responses don't need to be rational to be understandable, but what she does in the end is she takes out another victim, a woman who is completely innocent as far as we know, and who is the most community oriented of anyone in the film, Dolores is played by Gabriel Rose, who is from the town I now live in, but, she suffers and it's a big part of the novel as well that's left out of the, the film.

00;38;34;15 - 00;38;53;07

Jonathan Hafetz

I think that's really critical, that discrepancy between the book and the novel and the film doesn't grapple with the consequences for Dolores, or it does, but it kind of elides them by not really showing what could have happened. Right. You have, you know, legal scholar like Carrie McGill, meadow and others praising Nicole, decision to lie as telling her own truth.

00;38;53;07 - 00;39;10;10

Jonathan Hafetz

Right. And as you said, she has her own motives. And there's something affirming about it. Maybe somewhat irrational in a sense that there's not enough money for her. At the end, there's a scene in the car between her and her father after it happens, where she says, Mr. Stevens is going to let me keep my computer, you know, but for her, it's very, you know, kind of affirming.

00;39;10;10 - 00;39;38;29

Jonathan Hafetz

She's very clear about what she's doing, but blame is finally affixed, and it's affixed, as you said. Dolores, the bus driver, the community minded woman who's just torn up with grief for being in some sense the agent for the death of these children who she had in her care because, Nicole says, Dolores speeding, driving recklessly. And so the film just doesn't talk about what the impact of that was on Dolores.

00;39;38;29 - 00;40;00;07

Jonathan Hafetz

And the book does, though, right? The book does talk about the impact of Nicole's life on Dolores. She's kind of shunned by the other people in the town. They don't want anything to do with her. They're not going to acknowledge her. They won't give her assistance when she runs into them at the demolition derby, at the annual race that they have with her husband.

00;40;00;07 - 00;40;17;11

Jonathan Hafetz

They won't give her a scissors with her husband. Albert, who's disabled in a wheelchair because he had a stroke. So earlier, like the film has Dolores sort of saying, basically channeling her husband when Stephens comes and visits them. I don't want to be judged by a jury of strangers.

00;40;17;14 - 00;40;34;17

Sweet Hereafter Dialogue

You heard when Albert said. Robert said, the true jury of persons, peers is the people of her town only they, the people who have known her all her life and not 12 strangers, can decide her guilt or innocence.

00;40;34;19 - 00;40;44;19

Jonathan Hafetz

But the book suggests the jury of her peers judge her harshly because a lie. So there's a real tension, I think, between some of the accounts of what Nicole does in terms of the impact on Dolores.

00;40;44;21 - 00;41;03;28

Seán Patrick Donlan

It's a line from the book, but it's not one that would have been surprising in the film. Of course, as you say, Albert had a stroke. One of the ways in which Dolores is a lovely, caring person is she's taking care of her disabled husband, who's likely a veteran. By the way, there's a little Canadian symbol on his, I thought it was Felice that suggests that he's a veteran as well, but he can't communicate in a clear way.

00;41;03;28 - 00;41;23;10

Seán Patrick Donlan

But she seems to understand him. But what he says in the book is that blame creates comprehension. It's not a startling phrase, given what we've already talked about, but in this case, blame is not about finding a way to, for example, discovered that railing wasn't sufficiently strong, you know, in that area with that speed limit and so on.

00;41;23;13 - 00;41;42;25

Seán Patrick Donlan

Blame means scapegoating in casual conversation. We know what it means, but it's something that goes back to the Old Testament, to the Torah, and to the idea of an animal, a goat. Being sacrificed for the sins of the community or carrying the sins of the community as it's released off into the desert to die. And Dolores is the person here who's scapegoated and sacrificed.

00;41;43;01 - 00;42;04;07

Seán Patrick Donlan

And as you say in the novel, the entire final chapter is about Dolores is discovering in the aftermath of the lie what's happened and she doesn't know when she arrives at this demolition derby, which is interesting in itself because the demolition derby is apparently what Albert loves to see it at the fair, and it's an old car of hers that's in the demolition derby.

00;42;04;07 - 00;42;23;28

Seán Patrick Donlan

And so she realizes, watching as people are cheering, the car being pummeled, actually, Billy's, they're drunk and Billy reveals to Dolores that Nicole is lied and she's stunned. She the first part of the chapter. She talks about how the community has her family. It's the most important thing to her, and by the end of the chapter, she realizes that the community has let her go.

00;42;24;01 - 00;42;42;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

They've let it go on the basis of a lie. They scapegoated her. It is not a complicated because the car wins. I think the demolition derby, even that is something that everyone cheers. So maybe surviving the scapegoating is important too. But she's very seriously harmed by what Nicole has done in the film. We see Steven's two years later when he's going to visit Zoe again.

00;42;43;03 - 00;43;01;11

Seán Patrick Donlan

He's on the flight, so when he sees her working in an airport, so she's driving a bus there, and I would say she smiles. Exactly. But she's not in pleasant either. And she doesn't, you know, shake her fist or anything. But she's clearly no longer in a community. She's working at an airport and torn from ostracized from the community, which she felt so much a part of.

00;43;01;11 - 00;43;14;29

Seán Patrick Donlan

And, you know, she's got to pay Albert's bills to, again, Canada. Less of a concern. But in upstate New York, it might have been very serious for her to have lost her job and lost the opportunity to find a way to be compensated for the accident, or so I thought.

00;43;14;29 - 00;43;32;20

Jonathan Hafetz

The film ends with the shot. Right. So this is Steven's after this long flight where he's met Zoe's childhood friend he's talked to. Allison has gone back to his past. He gets off, he's getting into his car, he puts his luggage, and he sees Dolores ushering these passengers onto the airport shuttle. She runs and she's kind of now in a new role.

00;43;32;20 - 00;43;53;04

Jonathan Hafetz

That different, but similar to the role she played before. I read it as something of a not unhappy ending for Dolores and the film. I didn't get a sense of ostracization so much as she kind of moved on and found some separate peace, if you will, as opposed to kind of the more direct ostracization that she faces in the book.

00;43;53;06 - 00;44;10;05

Seán Patrick Donlan

I agree that that may be true to maybe what the director intended as well. And again, there's so much more in the novel, but remember, she talks about the children of her town. She's very community oriented. She's working in an airport, you know. So yes, she's caring for those people, but she has no relationship with those people. And can't they transient.

00;44;10;05 - 00;44;23;23

Seán Patrick Donlan

She'll bring them somewhere on the fly out the next day. So she's lost that connection to her community, that sense of family, as she mentions in the book, that she had. But it may be a way of, again, of softening, dampening what happens in the film. I agree with you there.

00;44;23;25 - 00;44;49;09

Jonathan Hafetz

I think it's an example of what Nicole talks about, in the final words of living in the Sweet Hereafter, this kind of bittersweet place where you can talk a little about in a second when we sum up. But it's interesting about the blame, because some of the critics that we talked about of the film and view it as a critique of law, an ambulance chaser, Austin Sarat, has written things like this critical of civil laws attempt to turn a misfortune into a, justice through a process of naming, claiming and blaming.

00;44;49;09 - 00;45;08;06

Jonathan Hafetz

In the end, there is blame assigned, right? It's almost like, in the book anyway. Right? There is someone that's blamed. It's almost like, and I think this has been written about something like the lottery, you know, like Shirley Jackson's book where someone does have to take the blame and is Dolores. So I think that's a to me, a significant difference between the two in terms of the impact of Nicole's life.

00;45;08;06 - 00;45;10;05

Jonathan Hafetz

Like you said, it's a separate chapter in the book.

00;45;10;07 - 00;45;41;12

Seán Patrick Donlan

I do think that just as the idea that, we've all lost her children that Stephens mentions earlier, this idea, the fact of scapegoating, not just of blame, again, of scapegoating is something that, central to the novel, is less central to the film. Goya made a lot of changes to the text and was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay again, in addition to reading the novel and that complicating my reading, I found a screenplay online that I thought was the screenplay for the film and discovered it was in earlier screenplay.

00;45;41;14 - 00;45;58;22

Seán Patrick Donlan

It may have been the shooting script, but not the final script. And there's a lot that was taken out and most of it for the better, because it's pretty heavy handed. And it's clear, even in interviews that McGowan has said that the film was about two things. It's about the loss the communities lost, the children and Nicole, and so he moves are very much to the center.

00;45;58;23 - 00;46;22;12

Seán Patrick Donlan

There's scenes where the song courage, nothing subtle about that, is played as she acts. And then in the final part of the film, which again, is it probably actually doesn't exist in real time, it probably is a dreamlike sequence, but it's a earlier period where she's caring for the kids. She's, I guess, closing the book, The Pied Piper, a narrative that was added by going into the film to the story, and she kisses the kids.

00;46;22;12 - 00;46;44;08

Seán Patrick Donlan

Good night. I don't know if that means anything in mind, but she walks out and we see her framed at windows in the house. By lights, I mean, logically, if that occurred earlier in the film, it's actually Billie coming home, but she's illuminated by the glow. There's also the possibility, of course, that it's somehow her father arriving as well in the dangers of that.

00;46;44;11 - 00;47;02;17

Seán Patrick Donlan

But it is this, again, beautiful final scene that is actually difficult, I think, to make a lot of sense of, but nevertheless lovely, poetic and no doubt part of what is attractive about the film. I doubt that most viewers of the film see this film, or most films in the same way. Maybe you hear it too, where it's important to sort those things out as best we can.

00;47;02;19 - 00;47;14;23

Jonathan Hafetz

So Sean can jump just a little bit of more about the director, Adam Egoyan. This is, I think, such an amazing film. Also, some of the decisions he made or other decisions he made in adapting Russell Banks's novel.

00;47;14;25 - 00;47;33;25

Seán Patrick Donlan

Sure. I mean, again, it's interesting. He was born in Egypt. He was the son of Armenian Egyptian parents, and my understanding is that they named him Adam because of a nuclear plant that was being built in Egypt. So it's not an Armenian name, you know, there's not another explanation. It's a curious name, but he moved to British Columbia when he was two and grew up, here.

00;47;34;00 - 00;47;56;04

Seán Patrick Donlan

And, the film is, I think still is best known work. He was nominated for Academy Awards for best director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and he adapted it from a Russell Banks novel. And we've talked about how it was set in upstate New York, and that was inspired. The novel was inspired by a similar tragedy in Texas in the 1980s, and in that crash in Texas, I think it was also in Texas.

00;47;56;04 - 00;48;16;23

Seán Patrick Donlan

The, the lawyers certainly behaved very badly and, swarmed in in all the worse stereotypes of ambulance chasing. But in terms of the film and in the novel, again, makes a number of changes we've mentioned. And I'll say more in a minute. I think about the Pied Piper of the introduction to that point with me. And maybe I should also say that banks was around is my understanding during the filming.

00;48;16;23 - 00;48;35;09

Seán Patrick Donlan

And banks, in fact plays a character in the film. Banks is a doctor who speaks in the court briefly in the film. And I wish I knew more about banks as a writer to to better understand the themes of his book and how they translate to the film. But again, adds the Pied Piper poem. And as I said, the music in the film is influenced by that choice as well.

00;48;35;12 - 00;48;54;27

Seán Patrick Donlan

Again, added the images of the young Stevens family and beautiful images that are important to, I think, the appreciation people have for the film going and Stevens flight to Zoe. Two years after the events of the film, he moves it to Canada, although it may be that that was practical and maybe financial in some sense, but it also has some curious effects.

00;48;54;27 - 00;49;13;02

Seán Patrick Donlan

As I've said, the situation would be different. The concerns about medical care would be different in Canada than they would be in the States, and there are a number of little quirks as a result of that. The film talks about miles per hour and kilometers, things like that. And as we said, the film omits the last final chapter, with Dolores focusing on the consequences of Nicole's lies.

00;49;13;08 - 00;49;33;21

Seán Patrick Donlan

But the Pied Piper, it is interesting, and there's a lot of ancient is the right word, but a very old legend that tells of a town that engages a pied piper to rid their town of rats, and then they refuse to pay the Pied Piper. And so he leads the children away. And in the version in, the Robert Browning Version from the mid-19th century that we get here into a mountain and they disappear forever.

00;49;33;24 - 00;49;53;10

Seán Patrick Donlan

And it is poetic. And it's one of those things, I think, if you don't explore deeply, is lovely about the film, and you walk away thinking, what a nice addition. I think if you explore it, it becomes very complicated and problematic. Who is the Pied Piper? Well, the obvious choice is it's Stevens. But again, I think if we see if we understand Stevens character, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

00;49;53;10 - 00;50;11;17

Seán Patrick Donlan

And and there are other possibilities. Dolores makes comments that make her sound like she's plucking the children, you know, like berries. And so, you know, maybe she's the Pied Piper, but I think ultimately there is no Pied Piper because it's not part of the story. It's something that's been introduced by the director and I think somewhat imperfectly, although I should say, because I know I have been critical at times.

00;50;11;21 - 00;50;31;14

Seán Patrick Donlan

I think it's a fantastic film and I encourage anyone to watch it, but I would also encourage people to to read the book if they're so inclined. There is one other interesting element for me, at least, about the pied Piper, and that is there are a number of ways in which, in the novel there are hints at something fairy tale like, or something beyond the ordinary reality about this community as well.

00;50;31;14 - 00;50;52;08

Seán Patrick Donlan

And twice in the book, Stevens refers to the, entering the community as entering the forest primeval. And it's funny because I knew that phrase, but I couldn't remember what it's from until literally this morning when I looked it up again. And it's from, of all things, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, which is about the expulsion of the Acadians out of Canada and to, among other places, my Louisiana.

00;50;52;08 - 00;51;12;09

Seán Patrick Donlan

It was interesting to see that it was that connection, but certainly the way the film is shot in many ways elements both in the novel and the film create. This is not just a very real event that was horrific for all involved, but it's something more timeless as well. And again, even I was critical a moment ago about the final scene in the Light and so on, but I think that contributes to it as well.

00;51;12;09 - 00;51;26;09

Seán Patrick Donlan

And I think it probably will be a strength of the film into the future. There's a lot that we can do with audio clips and talk, but people have to see the film as well, and it is a lovely film, beautifully shot, and that's very much a part of its appeal. And quite rightly.

00;51;26;16 - 00;51;48;23

Jonathan Hafetz

I couldn't agree more. I mean, you know, talk about some of the differences and choices Gwen made in adapting the novel, but I think the film really does just stand on its own as just a supreme piece of filmmaking. And having watched it twice again, preparing for the podcast, each time you really notice different things and sort of mysteries that start to unravel themselves or just that remain as mysteries.

00;51;48;23 - 00;52;06;11

Jonathan Hafetz

The ambiguity of the Pied Piper and what its meaning is and how it interacts with the film. I don't think there's a clear answer, but I do think it adds some dimension. I mean, idea of treating the film as something of a fairy tale with no clear interpretation. One other note just before we wrap up on again, he also cast his wife in the film.

00;52;06;17 - 00;52;15;09

Jonathan Hafetz

His wife Archana Kanji on if I'm pronouncing that correctly, plays Wanda Otto, one of the grief stricken parents, and she's in a lot of his films.

00;52;15;09 - 00;52;30;07

Seán Patrick Donlan

So that's right. In first of all, she's also Armenian, Armenian, Canadian. I think in this part of what their connection was, I think they met in university. But in addition, she recommended the book to to a Georgian as well. So it's because of her that he ended up adapting the book and making the film.

00;52;30;09 - 00;52;51;29

Jonathan Hafetz

So the inverse of blame being credit. So it's, it's really got it goes, it's a hard part. Otherwise we wouldn't have this amazing film. And I think, as you said, there's lessons in there about personal injury law and some of the dynamics, but it's really much more kind of a meditation about larger themes that are connected to the law of blame and responsibility and grief and healing.

00;52;52;04 - 00;53;01;16

Jonathan Hafetz

It's just a great film. Well, thanks so much on. It's been great having you on to talk about this and to share all your insights and knowledge about the movie in the book with me on the podcast.

00;53;01;23 - 00;53;08;10

Seán Patrick Donlan

Thank you. It's been fantastic to talk about it, and I love the work you do. It's wonderful to talk to somebody who loves both law and film as much as I do.

00;53;08;13 - 00;53;09;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Thanks again.