Examining Adaptation in The Sweet Hereafter: Fidelity

The starting point for adapting a textual story to film is determining how faithful the adaptation will be to the original in order to map out the path of its creation. A filmmaker must decide if he would like to create a free adaptation, using the original as inspiration and interpreting or contextualizing it in a new way, or if he would rather pursue a faithful adaptation, attempting to reproduce the narrative as closely as possible onto film, though technical constraints of each medium make complete fidelity almost impossible. These are of course the two extremes; filmmakers also adapt stories with a fidelity compromised between the two.
There are many theories on film adaptation and the different ways in which it is approached, including those of Dudley Andrew, outlined in his book Concepts in Film Theory. Andrew's chapter entitled "Adaptation" suggests that film adaptation from literary text can be reduced to three modes: borrowing, intersecting, and transforming. Borrowing occurs when a filmmaker borrows "material, idea, or form" from a narrative text; in doing so it can be said that the text remains in control of the story (98). He often will use the prestige of the original in order to support his own version, and drawing upon the literary text, encourages the audience members to "call up new or especially powerful aspects of a cherished work." When intersecting is used to create an adaptation, the original text is preserved in its truest form as the differences in both media are respected and the story essentially remains "unassimilated" in adaptation. This often results from a fear of or refusal to adapt, as the filmmaker does not want to alter or damage the integrity of the original. The final method outlined by Andrew is transformation in which some essential part of the original is preserved but the piece takes on a new form. The filmmaker will attempt to incorporate the "spirit" of the text and it is the film that controls the literary text. The filmmaker must find visual equivalents within his medium for elements that are verbal in the original text (98-100).
Atom Egoyan's film adaptation of Russell Banks' novel The Sweet Hereafter is considered a form of borrowing according to the theories of Dudley Andrew. Egoyan borrows the story from Banks' novel, and though his discourse further develops some aspects of the original, it still preserves and presents the text as its point of departure.