The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

Atom Egoyan's, The Sweet Hereafter is a film about loss and recovery. An accident involving a school bus in snowy Canadian roads has left a small town devastated which left many children dead. The grieving parents are visited by a no win no fee lawyer, Mitchell Stevens (Ian Holm.) He is a partner in a law firm and he might be just doing his job but it seems to be without much vigour or conviction. I am not sure whether money is even a motivation for him. Stevens own daughter is a drug addict who only contacts him when she wants money for more drugs. Apart from that she hates him and he knows he has lost her.He persuades some of the parents to file a class action lawsuit by claiming the design or construction of the bus was faulty.The grieving parents and some of the survivors all have some secret. Did bus driver Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose) drive too fast or drive carelessly given the road conditions? Does Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polly) one of the kids paralysed below the waist might want to take revenge on her abusive father? One of the parent, Billy (Bruce Greenwood) who was following the bus and waving at his children is against the lawsuit and wants the others to drop it.The film does not start with the crash. It is told in non chronological order and we have several story strands. one of them is the use of 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' which draws parallels of a town suffering from the loss of its children. Maybe Stevens will lead the townsfolk out of the darkness but he is suffering as well when he recounts his struggle with his drug addict daughter to one of her old friends he meets in a plane journey.The film is about grief, sadness and the tortuous journey to recovery. Unfortunately the film does not always flow well and although I understand why some people would want to sue for damages, I never really understood why Billy did not want to sue? Nicole is paralysed, money would be useful to her and help her.

Okay, so Egoyan has faded from view it seems, but for a while as he really was something. Exotica was powerful in exemplifying his paradigm. A narrator trapped in hurt that he constantly relives as performance, the entrapment as memory, the narrative of vaguely dreamlike connections as self. More than just some drama out there, it was a coda penetrating into something of the very process that gives rise to the ruminating mind; self. He extends it here.Once more a narrator who remains trapped in impotent hurt - a lawyer whose daughter has strayed in drugs - who is now approaching people much like him, heartbroken by childloss, to convince them of the need to find someone to punish and hold responsible. A larger view through this man. About us, unable to come to terms with the fact that life is transient and will sometimes break down for no reason. And how this freezes love, makes rigid our ability to remain supple in the face of mishap - and if this isn't the definition of love, I know of no other - and turns it into incessant ego.Egoyan is an intelligent mind in sketching his paradigm and again in how he pursues resolutions. Parents having been convinced by this bitter man (who is a storyteller working to construct a legal story that justifies) to throw their hurt outwards, turn it into recrimination, it's the surviving daughter who breaks the cycle of suffering for all involved. How she does it, again referencing narratives, is by fabricating a memory, fiction that requires a performance. It's not the truth of course, but it's what needs to be done so that fictions can be chucked away and simple acceptance can begin the work of mending. Yes, he can be obvious in spots and parallels, more so here than Exotica. He can be as simply lyrical as Kieslowski, as complexly layered as Medem. But seen overall, it's the larger awareness of life as flow that goes through many veils that makes this worthwhile. On these veils are seen the shapes of bygone life, mind itself as it wonders. He pursues this mind with an eye that is marvelously freed from the here and now to surge forward and back in search. This effort in film is far from novel, it goes back to Tarkovsky at least, but it's tuned to the same purpose; how to see with an eye that remains supple in the face of reality.And we can venture even further out to offer this view about the world that gives rise to this work. Egoyan can trace a past life for himself in a corner of that bygone world that centuries ago was overran by invaders from the steppe. He must be acutely aware of a past that is shrouded in ruin, the need to placate ghosts of memory. This is a world I happen to share with him, first Armenia, then Constantinople and all the way up to the Danube, that was wrecked in its physical reality, severed from it in so many ways, and a deep part of it has taken flight in dreams and memory, which is the subject of both this and his previous film.So is it any wonder that he draws fresh water from Tarkovsky's spring? It's a spring that both Parajanov, another Armenian, and Kusturica later would draw from, and it goes back in time in a deep way. Something to keep in mind while viewing him.

Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) is a lawyer struggling with his drug addicted daughter. He's trying to convince various parents to sue the town. They lost their children when the school bus driven by Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose) gets into an accident on a snow covered road. The town is the only one with deep pockets and Mitchell will say anything to get them to sue. Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley) is a survivor who was sexually corrupted by her father.This movie meanders a lot. There are long flashbacks of not only the bus ride and crash but also some of the life before that day. It has an ethereal dreamlike quality about it. It has the sad moody devastation. It doesn't make it a compelling watch unless seeing the saddest people in the world is fun for you.

So this is the best rated movie of Atom Egoyan? I love his movies, and I have to say, sadly I expected a bit more. Don't get me wrong, cinematic everything is perfect. This movie is filmed beautifully. Every actor played on an extremely high level and not a single miscast was to be found in this movie! Overall it was a great watch.For me that was only destructed by the story. To me it felt, that the original novel was not suited to become a movie. The whole movie lacked a red thread. Strings didn't seem to be connected, and i failed finding a bigger meaning. All I found have been starting points, ideas. Great ideas, but in the end, the movie didn't work for me. It almost convinced me, but ultimately failed at the ending.