Adaptation
Banks approved of Egoyan's adaptation, playing a role in the film as the town doctor, and discussing the film with Egoyan in the DVD's commentary track. Not only did Banks approve of the adaptation, but he also freely admitted that this was one instance in which the film was better than the book.
In adapting the novel, Egoyan changed the setting from Upstate New York to Canada. Another major change is Egoyan's addition of references to the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning, which Nicole is seen reading to children who later die in the accident. In that story, the Pied Piper leads all the children away, never to return, after their parents refuse to honour their debt to him. The only child left in the now-childless town is a crippled child who was unable to follow the Piper's song and now wishes he could have gone with the other children. In the movie, the survivor, Nicole, clearly identifies with this child, in contrast to her motivation in the novel where she is primarily acting out of anger against her father.
Read more about this topic: The Sweet Hereafter (film)
Famous quotes containing the word adaptation:
“In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in. Within me is no disturbing interplay now, but only the steady currents of adaptation and of sympathy.”
—Haniel Long (1888–1956)
“Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)