Tom McCamus (1997 Sweet Hereafter)
Excerpt from Take One 1997: Tom McCamus | The Sweet Hereafter
Toronto
Angela Baldassarre
Principal photography has just ended on Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, based on the novel of the same name by Russell Banks The movie is the first Egoyan has adapted from a source that is not his own. It tells the story of a lawyer (Ian Holm) who represents the members of a small community following a tragic school bus accident. The ensemble cast includes Arsinee Khanjian (of course), Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Gabrielle Rose, Tom McCamus and Maury Chaykin.
© Take One
Excerpt from Festival Cannes 1997: Tom McCamus
THE SWEET HEREAFTER
In Competition - Feature Films
Directed by : ATOM EGOYAN Country: CANADA Duration: 110.00 minutes
Grand Prix, 1997 International Critic's Prize by the F.I.P.R.E.S.C.I., 1997
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Actors
Bruce GREENWOOD
Ian HOLM
Arsinée KHANJIAN
Tom MCCAMUS
Sarah POLLEY
Gabriel ROSE
© Cannes
Excerpt from Variety 5/16/97: Tom McCamus
Review: ‘The Sweet Hereafter’
Brendan Kelly May 16, 1997 | 12:00AM PT
“The Sweet Hereafter” chronicles the heart-wrenching fallout on the town of Sam Dent, B.C., after the bus accident.
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In the novel, Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley), one of the survivors of the crash, is filled with anger provoked by a childhood torn apart by a sexually abusive father, Sam Burnell (Tom McCamus); in a change that’s bound to be controversial, Egoyan’s script turns the father into a more sympathetic person, and the discreet incest scene implies that it is a consensual relationship.
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Polley and McCamus are excellent, conveying a wide emotional range with minimal dialogue.
© Variety
Excerpt from New York Times 9/7/97: Tom McCamus
By the Book but in the Here and Now
By Stephen Holden Published: September 7, 1997
Photos: 'The Sweet Hereafter' Tom McCamus and Sarah Polley are in an adaptation of the Russell Banks novel.
© New York Times
Excerpt from New York Times 10/3/97: Tom McCamus
'The Sweet Hereafter': A Town Bereft, Limping Into the Future
By JANET MASLIN October 3, 1997
Other matters, like the eerily serene love between the teen-age Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley) and her father (Tom McCamus), or the affair between widowed Billy Ansell (Bruce Greenwood) and unhappily married Risa Walker (Alberta Watson), meant trouble even before the crash.
© New York Times
Excerpts from New York State Writer's Institute 11/19/97: Tom McCamus
The Sweet Hereafter
November 19, 1997 (WEDNESDAY) at 7:00 p.m. Page Hall, 135 Western Avenue (Free and Open to the Public)
(Canadian, 1997, 110 minutes, color, 35 mm, Rated R) Directed by Atom Egoyan This is a special sneak preview screening of the soon to be released Canadian film. Seating will be limited to 350 attendees.
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Winner of the Grand Prize, the International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, writer/producer/director Atom Egoyan's THE SWEET HEREAFTER is about how a small community deals with the tragedy of a school bus accident. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Russell Banks, the film fuses a literary sense of detail and scope with richly cinematic storytelling. Filmed in Toronto and the interior of British Columbia, THE SWEET HEREAFTER stars Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, and Bruce Greenwood. The film is scheduled to be released by Fine Line Features in December 1997.
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Synopsis
On a winter's day, in the small rural community of Sam Dent, British Columbia, a school bus inexplicably crashes into a frozen lake, taking the lives of fourteen children and injuring many others. Shortly thereafter, Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), a big city lawyer, comes to the community with promises to compensate its citizens for their loss.
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Finally, and most crucial to Stephens' case is the Burnell family: Sam and Mary (Tom McCamus and Brooke Johnson), and their teenage daughter Nicole (Sarah Polley), a beautiful young singer who survived the accident but will never walk again. As the prime witness, Nicole holds the key to the class-action suit, but as we learn more of her personal history and of the disturbing relationships within her own own family, we see that there is more than mystery and more than one sorrow below the thin veneer of what appears to be a tightly-woven community.
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Tom McCamus (Sam Burnell)
Acclaimed film and stage actor Tom McCamus is known for his often edgy and morally complex characterizations. He won the Genie Award for Best Actor for his work in David Wellington's I Love a Man in Uniform and was nominated again for Wellington's lauded Long Day's Journey Into Night, in which he reprised his role as Edmund Tyrone from the Stratford Festival production. McCmnus' other film credits include Guilty as Sin and Beautiful Dreamers. Among his numerous television credits are the series "Due South" and "Tek Wars." McCamus is a long-standing member of the acting ensembles of the Shaw Festival and the Stratford Festival. During his eight years at the Shaw Festival, he has played leading roles in productions of "Peter Pan," "Once in a Lifetime," "Holiday," and "Man of Destiny." Over the past four seasons he has appeared in the Stratford Festival's productions of "Sweet Bird of Youth," "Waiting for Godot," "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Hamlet" and "Long Day's Journey into Night." At this season's Stratford Festival, he is playing King Arthur in "Camelot" and the title role in "Coriolanus." McCamus received the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best Actor for his performance in Theatre Plus' production of "Abundance."
© New York State Writers
Excerpt from Austin Chronicle 11/28/97: Tom McCamus
All Wrapped Up: Holiday Film Previews
By Marjorie Baumgarten, Fri., Nov. 28, 1997
THE SWEET HEREAFTER D: Atom Egoyan; with Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Arsinée Khanjian, Alberta Watson, Maury Chaykin. Grand prize winner at the Cannes Film Festival, The Sweet Hereafter is Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's screen adaptation of Russell Banks' 1991 novel about the loss and healing that occurs among the residents of a small community after the sudden deaths of 14 local children in a schoolbus accident. With this new film, astringent stylist Egoyan (Exotica, The Adjuster) seems to be developing a more universal dramatic impulse that is winning him wide praise and new fans. (early 98)
© Austin Chronicle
Excerpt from Entertainment Weekly 11/28/97: Tom McCamus
The Sweet Hereafter (1997) MPAA Rating: R
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman on Nov 28, 1997
The townspeople, as well, are characterized with beautiful intimacy, from the guilt-choked bus driver to the serenely raging hippie couple whose adopted son died in the accident to the town's most ambiguous residents, a delicate teenager (Sarah Polley) and her adoring father (Tom McCamus), who love each other and, as we learn, are also in love with each other. The link between their incestuous relationship and the bus accident is the elusive mystery of The Sweet Hereafter.
© Entertainment Weekly
Excerpt from Columbia Free Press 12/22/97
The Sweet Hereafter - a film review
by Rich Elias, Dec 22, 1997
Tom McCamus, a regular at the Stratford Festival, plays Nicole Burnell's father (and plays it well, although Egoyan appears to have left material on the cutting room floor which, in the book, helps explain his daughter's actions in the movie). Side note: McCamus and actor Stephen Ouimette starred in a Stratford production of "Waiting for Godot" I saw two seasons ago. It is being reprised this summer.
© The Free Press
Excerpt from Hartford Courant 12/24/97: Tom McCamus
School Bus Tragedy Haunts A Small Town
December 24, 1997|By MALCOLM JOHNSON; Courant Film Critic
Throughout, the cast is exemplary, with persuasive work by Maury Chaykin as the motel proprietor, by Alberta Watson as his sensual, adulterous wife, by Bruce Greenwood as her rough-edged lover, by Tom McCamus as the two-faced, abusive father.
© Hartford Courant
Excerpt from Sun Sentinel 6/5/98: Tom McCamus
Sweet Hereafter A Grim Downer
June 5, 1998|By SCOTT HETTRICK Entertainment News Service
THE SWEET HEREAFTER (New Line, priced for rental, rated R) 1997. Directed by Atom Egoyan; starring Ian Holm, Nicole Burnell, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Arsinee Khanjian and Gabriel Rose. The Sweet Hereafter is filled with great characters, terrific acting and a potentially powerful concept.
© Sun Sentinel
Excerpt from Brattle Theatre Film Notes 1/9/09: Tom McCamus
THE SWEET HEREAFTER and the Cinema of Confinement
Posted on January 9, 2009 By Jared M. Gordon
We’re subsequently introduced to teenage Nicole Burnell (Sara Polley) as she rehearses her singing some time before her performance at a county fair. Afterwards, she embraces her young father and the two walk off together. The initial ambiguity between Nicole and Sam (Tom McCamus) regarding their relationship is a pivotal plot point - is he a lover? A friend? He is indeed her father, although this initial misgiving leads into one of this town’s many dark secrets.
© Brattle Film
Excerpt from Jared Mobarak 2/20/09: Tom McCamus
REVIEW: The Sweet Hereafter [1997]
Posted by Jared Mobarak on Friday, February 20, 2009
There were also a couple of truly great turns from Tom McCamus and Bruce Greenwood. McCamus plays Polley’s father with a very intriguing interior makeup. Truly loving his daughter, too much in fact with regards to their presumed sexual relationship, he always has a smile mixed with apparent awkwardness, unsure of his role in her life. Complicated to the end, it is his performing without words in two later pivotal scenes that shine most.
© Jared Mobarak
Excerpt from Winipeg Free Press 4/3/09: Tom McCamus
Great Canadian movies: 10 essential films from the Canuck canon
Posted: 04/3/2009 1:00 AM
The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Director: Atom Egoyan Cast: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Tom McCamus and Bruce Greenwood
From the tragedy-feeding negligence lawyer (Ian Holm) and the wheelchair-bound crash survivor (Sarah Polley) to the bus driver and a grieving father, the four narrators of the film all have either secrets to conceal, or pain to endure. Polley's unforgettable turn as a double victim -- of the crash and of incestuous abuse at the hands of her father -- is both unsettling and unforgettable.
© Winnipeg Free Press
Excerpt from Slant Magazine 11/5/12: Tom McCamus
The 100 Best Films of the 1990s
By Slant Staff ON November 5, 2012
99. The Sweet Hereafter.
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The second scene seems to portend a much more supportive, if not positively bucolic, relationship between aspiring young singer Nicole (Sarah Polley) and her father Sam (Tom McCamus), though, as it develops, their bond is far more troubling than it first appears.
© Slant Magazine