The Sweet Hereafter
(Canada, 1997)
Seen on 24 December 1998 with Linda for $8.75 at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema
Perhaps I am turning into a stone, but I was unmoved by *The Sweet Hereafter*, although it is a beautifully filmed movie. Other reviewers have described it as elegaic. While it does remind you of an elegy, how many elegies run feature-length?
*The Sweet Hereafter* examines the lives of parents just after a fatal accident in which a bus plunges through a guard rail, careens down an embankment, and falls through the frozen surface of a lake in British Columbia.
The story that drives the movie is the arrival of an attorney, Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) who wants to push some of the grieving parents into pursuing compensation, that perhaps somehow the senseless tragedy can be blamed on someone or something; a careless school bus driver, or a faulty bolt, or something. As if monetary compensation will make up for the loss of fourteen children. This sort of lawsuit will gain him one-third of the netted compensation. Also, it means he has to find the "right" sort of pa rents to testify.
There are also two parallels to the main storyline. First, there is the irony of Stephens appealing to parents when his own daughter, a drug addict, is out of control and he can no longer do anything for her. Or, as he put it, his love for her has become and anger something like "steaming piss." Also, there is the parallel of the children's story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. This is one of the strongest points of the movie. A lot of the parents in *The Sweet Hereafter* are hardly worthy of their children, and there is a strong sense of not just sadness but punishment as well.
Director Atom Egoyan does a good job of showing people after tragedy. There is a strong sense of the Time Before and the Time After. Unfortunately, from the beginning of the movie, it is difficult to follow the timing of the story and the many flashbacks, as there is a lot of jumping around. Holm is shown having a chance meeting on a plane--a friend of his daughter--to whom he talks of his daughter's troubles. Where that fits into the timing of the rest of the story is very difficult.
I think that because the story is told subtly, and because the characters seem so low-key and almost stoic, it is hard to really empathize with them. There is also the taboo of incest, a topic that should have evoked more emotion, but Egoyan does a lot of filmus interruptus, and the constant jumping around of flashbacks hurts the full development of investing in the story and the characters. You are on the edge of tears, and then suddenly, you are pulled out of the moment. Even when the characters are fighting, as in the scene where Billy Ansell (Bruce Greenwood) and Sam Burnell (Tom McCamus) disagree over having a group lawsuit, there is no intensity.
A town losing 14 children in a tragedy undoubtedly changes that town forever, and Egoyan shows the emptiness and sterility very well. It's just a shame that it was not as moving as it could have been. *The Sweet Hereafter* left me with the feeling of looking at the carcass of a wrecked bus, but not knowing anything about the people who perished within or the people who loved them. Feeling sorry for them is as difficult as feeling sorry for the people of Hamelin. There is more after than before to really build the sort of sympathy a movie like this surely wants to achieve.
Written by Atom Egoyan, based on a novel by Russell Banks
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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