THE SWEET HEREAFTER (Fine Line) Starring: Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Alberta Watson, Stephanie Morganstern, Caerthan Banks. Screenplay: Atom Egoyan, based on the novel by Russell Banks. Producers: Atom Egoyan and Camelia Frieberg. Director: Atom Egoyan. MPAA Rating: R (nudity, adult themes, profanity) Running Time: 112 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It's not often that a film inspires me to use the adjective "sublime," but there's no better word to describe what Atom Egoyan has accomplished in THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Most films about tragic subjects appear to be driven by a fear that emotions writ small will leave an audience hungry for grand catharsis, so they attack with teary-eyed embraces and a swelling John Williams score. Egoyan refuses to turn on a warning light when he's about to go for your emotions. When he does, he catches them almost as unguarded as the emotions of his characters.
No other approach could have worked the same mournful, hypnotic magic Egoyan delivers in THE SWEET HEREAFTER. The setting is a small town in British Columbia devastated by a school bus accident which claimed the lives of twenty children. Into the still shell-shocked town steps Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), an attorney who wants to represent the children's parents in a civil negligence suit. Many of the parents respond to Stephens and come on board quickly. Others, like Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood), want nothing to do with Stephens. After all, he's just an ambulance-chaser preying on the community's need for someone to hold accountable for their pain. Isn't he?
Well, like most things in Atom Egoyan films, the obvious answer usually isn't the right one. Through a masterful use of overlapping and interwoven time frames, Egoyan gradually reveals details about the characters which cloud every motivation. Stephens, we learn, is tormented by the fate of his own daughter Zoe (Caerthan Banks), a drug addict who contacts him only when desperate for money. The roles of other characters in the story also unfold in bits and pieces: Nicole (Sarah Polley), a teen-aged survivor of the crash; Dolores Driscoll (Gabrielle Rose), the bus driver who can't help speaking of some of the victims in the present tense; Nicole's father Sam (Tom McCamus); Billy and married motel manager Risa (Alberta Watson). Egoyan's story-telling demands that you pay attention, forces you to draw conclusions, and allows you to feel without telling you _how_ to feel.
He's also a director who can startle you with his confident refusals to make the obvious choice. Nowhere is this more evident than his depiction of the bus accident itself. The moment is gripping and devastating in a completely unpredictable way because of what we see, what we don't see, and the context in which it is framed. The scene becomes a shocking and indelible image of parental helplessness, as does Ian Holm's bravura monologue in which Stephens describes a medical emergency which threatens Zoe's life as an infant. Egoyan portrays the deep, powerful and often illogical emotions of parenthood from several different perspectives, each one performed to perfection, each one with different wrenching consequences.
One of Egoyan's riskier choices is also one of the few which doesn't pay off. Several scenes in THE SWEET HEREAFTER are accompanied by Nicole reading passages from "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," an extended metaphor which grows less effective each time it's used. On screen, with the persistence of a voice, the comparison occasionally feels forced; I can imagine the device working much more effectively in the Russell Banks novel on which the film is based (and which I haven't read), as an entry or exit point to a chapter. THE SWEET HEREAFTER is still a remarkably literary film in the best sense of the word, perhaps the most novel-like film since John Sayles' LONE STAR. What Egoyan adds cinematically -- from Mychael Danna's otherworldly score to the ambiguity-enhancing final shot -- turns THE SWEET HEREAFTER into one of the year's most powerful works. And, in all probability, the most sublime.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 hereafter-glows: 9.
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