THE SWEET HEREAFTER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: An opportunistic lawyer comes to a
rural Canadian town in which a school bus accident
has killed many of the town's children. With a
smooth sincere-sounding line he turns grief into
anger in the hopes of building a class action
lawsuit. Atom Egoyan's non-linear telling gets in
the way a little, but this is a powerful statement
about the law and about grief. Rating: 8 (0 to
10), high +2 (-4 to +4)
New York Critics: 17 positive, 1 negative, 1 mixed
Atom Egoyan makes complex that often fit together like puzzles. His EXOTICA was a complex story that was never complete until the final scene made sense of things. THE SWEET HEREAFTER is not so tightly wound, but it is very tightly bound emotionally and still a puzzle. With this film Egoyan takes a close hard look at a cold British Columbia town in mourning after almost an entire generation of its children was wiped out in a tragic school bus accident. As the community tries to heal itself and carry on after the loss it is visited by a smooth and vaguely sinister lawyer. Mitchell Stephens (played by Ian Holm) implants in the minds of the townspeople that what is called for is not peace but a vengeful class action lawsuit. He convinces the locals that their should be no forgiveness for the guilty and that whenever there is an accident of this sort, there is always somebody who is guilty. There is always somebody who should be made to pay. He is the lawyer that they want to get them that payment and he will keep only a third for himself.
In the hands of a lesser director Mitchell could easily be reduced to being a one-dimensional devil. The script, written as well as directed by Egoyan, based on the novel by Russell Banks, dissects that character of Stephens. Stephens has a daughter on drugs and willing to do any self-destructive action to spite her father. For this daughter Stephens feels an icy helplessness and a sort of frozen rage. Icy and calculated are all of his reactions in an Oscar-worthy performance. In the course of the film we learn a great deal about him and where and how he lost his emotions. A major theme explored in this film, and there are several, is things that are out of people's control and feelings of utter helplessness. There is some fascination with the understated way that Stephens does his job. He searches for the parents who can best make a winning case for him and are the most susceptible to being won over. He also carefully checks them out for weaknesses that could harm his case.
Egoyan has some nice stylistic moves. The bleak Canadian winter seems to pervade the entire film and reflect the coldness of the people in the town who have isolated themselves from their emotions. The icy weather acts upon people and performs its own mischief including the central tragedy of the film. Conversations in the film are anything but volatile. People seem to think out their next response with notable pauses in the conversion. Then the film returns again and again to the theme of the Pied Piper. On one level the town has lost its children, disappearing not into a hole in a mountain that closes up but into a hole in the ground that also closes. On another level the grief of the parents has made them vulnerable to the outsider who wishes to lead them to where they might not otherwise not want to go. Egoyan holds off on showing the viewer the actual accident until late in the film. He shows it with a frightening simplicity. No dramatic music. The school bus just skids over the curb on a hill and out of sight slips down a hill onto a frozen pond where it slowly sinks. But it has a greater emotional impact than some of the fiery crashes we have seen elsewhere this year.
This is a film I expect to see on several best of the year lists, including my own. I suspect that it will not be remembered at Oscar time, being a modest Canadian film, but it certainly is one of the best of the year and will be on my top then list. I rate it a +8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1998 Mark R. Leeper
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