The Hanging Garden (1997)

Director:

Thom Fitzgerald

Writer:

Thom Fitzgerald (writer)

Release Date:

7 November 1997 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Romance

Tagline:

It's hard to go home... ten years after your death.

Plot:

William, a once obese and troubled teen, goes back to his family's home after being gone, without word...

Plot Keywords:

Wedding | Gay | Sex | Garden | Dancer

Awards:

20 wins & 10 nominations

Cast

Ian Parsons	...	Little Sweet William
Peter MacNeill	...	Whiskey Mac
Troy Veinotte	...	Teen Sweet William
Kerry Fox	...	Rosemary
Mark Austin	...	Preacher
Joel S. Keller	...	Fletcher
Heather Rankin	...	Black-Eyed Susan
Christine Dunsworth	...	Violet
Seana McKenna	...	Iris
Joan Orenstein	...	Grace
Chris Leavins	...	Sweet William
Ashley MacIsaac	...	Basil--Fiddler
Jocelyn Cunningham	...	Laurel
Jim Faraday	...	Mr. MacDougal
Sarah Polley	...	Teen Rosemary

Also Known As:

Le jardin suspendu (Canada: French title)

MPAA:

Rated R for strong sexuality, language, and a scene of a hanging, and some teen drug use.

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

UK | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Australia:MA | Finland:K-16 | Spain:13 | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada

Company:

Alliance Communications Corporation

Quotes:

Grace the Nun: Father, can you come and bless this Virgin
[statue]
Grace the Nun: for the lady, please?
Iris: No no, that's not necessary, please don't bother him ...
Grace the Nun: That's what he's here for, it's included! Father, are you ready to bless the Virgin or what?
[The priest comes up to the store counter and picks up the Virgin statuette.]
Grace the Nun: Oh hang on now, she hasn't got the receipt. How many times do I tell you, don't bless the Virgin until you get the receipt!

Movie Connections:

Featured in Weird Sex and Snowshoes: A Trek Through the Canadian Cinematic Psyche (2004) (TV)

Hanging Garden is a small, intensely felt film about a family in tatters and a son whose own problems are eclipsed until he does something he can't take back. Given the film's major conceit is a breach in family fabric that can't be woven back in, magic realism is an applicable term--but only so if shot through the caustic self-wounding humour of the Maritimes, where I lived for six years. If this seems dour, then consider the take-off marriage sequence that opens the film: drunkeness, homoeroticism, Celtic music madness and four-dozen f-words. This film is a gorgeous if painful tribute to growing up in a remove that already seems past its age, in an ocean playground whose garden has gone to seed. This film was ranked, and fairly, as the best Canadian film of 1997 by the Jay Stone of the Globe & Mail (Canada's national newspaper), and if that makes Americans laugh, then consider this is a ranking ahead of Sweet Hereafter, which only made it to the Best Director Oscar Nomination and Cannes Recognition for Atom Egoyan and was also Roger Ebert's #2 film of the year. Adulations all around are deserving for this home-grown production. The film only suffers from inexperience with some actors and having to come up with a conclusion for a tale that can't logically have one. And the parents are excellent in it too, especially the mum. At the singular, crucial sequence of the film all the elements of the film - colour, symbolism, lamentation and ladyslipperknots - fuse in breathtaking splendor, and I mean so in the inhaled gasp that graces the east coast 'yes '. It still stuns me in memoriam. Four Stars * * * *