CLICK ON CAROLINE. Dear Caroline Film Reviews http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/7066
THE SWEET HEREAFTER
Dear Caroline --
There is nothing simple about an Atom Egoyan film. The Canadian filmmaker excels at challenging the mind as well as the senses.
In Egoyan's followup to 1994's excellent "Exotica," Egoyan adapts Russell Banks' novel about a small British Columbia town dealing with the tragedy of a school bus crash that killed 14 of the town's children.
Just a simple plot summary wrenches the heart, but Egoyan deals with the subject matter in his trademark fashion as a simple, lyrical poem. I believe today's closest working director to Ingmar Bergman is Egoyan. Bille August, a Bergman disciple, comes close. Egoyan's films, like Bergmans, are psychological and emotional dramas from the head and the heart. They ask more questions than they provide and refuse to indulge in simplistic, "My, aren't-we-all-happy?" endings.
Like "Exotica," Egoyan attacks the story from many angles. "The Sweet Hereafter" is told from three time elements: the present, 1997, when attorney Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) is flying to meet with his troubled, drugged-out daughter; the recent past, 1995, when Stephens arrives in town hoping to gather evidence for a class-action suit after the accident; and then one week earlier at the time of the crash told from the view of babysitter Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley), who survived the accident but now lives as a paraplegic.
As in "Exotica," the film centers around the babysitter as the most important character, the bridge between the adults and the children.
Stephens arrives in town with the disturbed belief that he will help the town get over its grief with a lawsuit. What else would you expect from a lawyer? As Stephens explains to one couple, "There is no such thing as an accident. That word doesn't mean a thing to me."
But Stephens is dealing with his own grief, the increasingly distant relationship with his daughter who keeps in contact with him through desperate phone calls. Egoyan's script calmly builds as Holm's Stephens realizes the error of his ways by eventually sympathisizing with the town's folk, not as a lawyer, but as father.
The film's two discoveries, actually one discover and one re-discovery, are Polley and Holm. Newcomer Polley, who also appeared in "Exotica," is mesmerizing as she connects with distraught father Billy Ansell (Egoyan regular Bruce Greenwood) as the town's only two citizens questioning Stephens' motivation. Polley even does her own singing in the film's soundtrack.
The film's title come from the "Pied Piper of Hamelin," the children's tale Nicole reads to Billy's children while babysitting. The parallels between the B.C. town and Hamelin, another town which lost its children, are on purpose.
This is the first lead role I can ever remember for veteran Holm, who has suddenly become a hot property after 1996's "Big Night." Holm appeared in four 1997 features, but gives one of his best performances since "Chariots of Fire." He transforms from a manipulative lawyer planning to capitalize on the town's grief to an attorney with a conscience. Of course, it's Nicole that helps him make that transformation.
Rating: Three stars
Thinking of you, Geo. M. Wilcox
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