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The Sweet Hereafter

Rating

Director

Atom Egoyan

Screenplay

Atom Egoyan (Novel: Russell Banks)

Length

1h 52m

Starring

Ian Holm, Caerthan Banks, Sarah Polley, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Maury Chaykin, Stephanie Morgenstern, Kirsten Kieferle, Simon Baker, David Hemblen, Bruce Greenwood, Arsinée Khanjian, Earl Pastko

MPAA Rating

R

Basic Plot

A lawyer turns away from his own family problems to focus on a school bus accident resulting in the deaths of several children.

Review

The Sweet Hereafter finally came to my puny berg after having been in release since November last year, a mere six months later.

Not to say that I’m not happy to finally see it. I’m also glad I have. The film works very well on its own merits combining stunning cinematography, brilliant performances and a stirring screenplay.

Atom Egoyan works his camera into the lives of the parents and survivors of a deadly bus crash that left 14 children dead and others wounded. Their lives will never be the same.

The film begins with a city lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) who receives a call from his drug-addicted daughter. His chilling stone face in reaction to his daughters predicament gives you the instant impression that he has little concern for matters outside his own life and career.

That impression changes over the course of the film, we soon realise that he’s not a money-hungry lawyer like so many others of this day and age, he’s a concerened father whose own loss of a child, to drugs, is his main motivation for vindicating the emotions of the families who’ve lost their children.

The town is filled with a myriad of fascinating characters. There’s the bus driver, Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose), whose husband is confined to a wheelchair because of a stroke who doesn’t seem quite in a present state of mind. There is the widowed father, Billy Ansell (Bruce Greenwood), of two of the children lost in the crash who wants nothing to do with this lawyer and tries his best to get his fellow citizens to drop the suit.

At one point, the Dolores refers to Billy’s devotion to his children and celibacy after his wife dies of cancer. This we find out to be untrue. He is having an affair with the motel owner’s wife, Risa Walker (Alberta Watson).

Egoyan paints a picturesque town with stirring images in the snow. He takes his camera where it needs to go, into the torn apart lives of the victims.

He especially focuses on a young girl, Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley), who is left paralized from the legs down after the accident. Throughout the story, she is reading the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin to Billy’s two children. The refrains of this formerly harmless children’s poem echo through the film. They become the backbone of an involving story. The children have been led into the “sweet hereafter” leaving behind the lone lame child who couldn’t keep up and must live alone in the town where the childrens’ laughter has died.

Awards Prospects

Ian Holm gives a bravura performance deserving a nomination, Atom Egoyan’s screenplay is equally superb. The cinematography is also magnificent and deserving.

Review Written

Unknown