1997 Directed by Atom Egoyan
A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
Ian Holm Sarah Polley Tom McCamus Gabrielle Rose Alberta Watson Caerthan Banks Maury Chaykin Stephanie Morgenstern Kirsten Kieferle Arsinée Khanjian Earl Pastko Simon Baker David Hemblen Bruce Greenwood Sarah Rosen Fruitman Marc Donato Devon Finn Fides Krucker Magdalena Sokolowski James D. Watts Brooke Johnson Allegra Denton Peter Donaldson Russell Banks Mychael Danna
Dennis Berardi Frank Falcone Persis Reynolds James Cooper Craig Small Jason Carswell Sean Montgomery
Goro Koyama Andy Malcolm Steve Munro Tony Van den Akker Daniel Pellerin Ron Searles Keith Elliott Peter Kelly Steve Copley Bernie Cisternas Ross Redfern
El dulce porvenir, De beaux lendemains, Славное будущее, O Futuro Radioso, Das süße Jenseits, O Doce Amanhã, Suloinen ikuisuus, Das süsse Jenseits, Il dolce domani, スウィート ヒアアフター, Dulce porvenir, Den søte ettertid, Ljuva morgondag
Moving relationship stories Intense violence and sexual transgression emotional, emotion, family, moving or feelings emotional, emotion, sad, drama or illness murder, crime, drama, gripping or victim drama, marriage, family, emotional or emotion artists, biography, musician, songs or emotional Show All…
Justice isn’t always within reach, and lies aren’t always simple deflections of truth. Destiny, on occasion, seeks to scribble outside of the lines we have traced for our lives, leaving hideous blotches behind that refuse to be bowdlerized.
When providence fails, we cannot but sigh.
A beautiful, beautiful film!
I stumbled upon this on The Criterion Channel and gave it a watch with no context, it is very impressive. The sense of rural Canada is such an important character in this film, the helicopters gave a sense of the vastness of the area in which the accident took place. It’s always interesting to see films whose subjects wouldn’t normally be adapted. Given how inconclusive it is and how rural the town is, I can’t say I’ve seen anything like this movie other than the criminally underrated Wind River.
Rest In Peace to the great Sir Ian Holm. I’ve never seen him as the main character of a film, and he commands the screen quite well.…
The Sweet Hereafter is nothing sweet. Instead it is a tale of personal demons, set in a snowy small town, plagued by a tragic school bus accident, as well as dirty little secrets behind closed doors. Jumping in through the sensational incident as the entry point, director Atom Egoyan managed to create an air-tight world that's deeply reflective, mournful and in a way sarcastic, to give his own heartfelt take on the fallibility and mortality of life.
The Sweet Hereafter is a death-oriented story, with frequent symbolism to signify its ominous theme, from being trapped in a car-wash, to an eerie poem that uncannily parallels the actual accident. Despite its overall pessimistic tone, The Sweet Hereafter still manages to extract…
Holds up. Maybe the best adaptation of a book ever? Russell Banks' book is already cleverly constructed, but Egoyan scrambles the timeline for maximum emotional impact. Ian Holm's monologue about the incident from his daughter's childhood hit me especially hard this time (R.I.P.), but this is a team effort.
88/100
[Currently revisiting some favorite 1997 U.S. releases that I hadn't seen since around that time, in preparation for an A.V. Club "It was 20 years ago today" retrospective. For the most part, I'm just gonna make a few quick notes and then cut/paste what I wrote back then, because I've already fallen like a week behind with updates.]
• Miraculous that Egoyan mostly delivers on the promise of his sublime opening-credits sequence, with its sudden, heartrending shift from tranquil domesticity to "out, out, damn spot." Danna's simple, lovely acoustic score becoming a plaintive dirge invariably kicks off the waterworks.
• Man, I'd forgotten how brutal this gets at times. No onscreen decapitation can rival the abrupt cut from someone's naked…
the sort of thing that would be a ten part HBO miniseries now that wins 6 acting emmy's and the director ends up getting to remake something from the 80s they pick out of a hat. there's so much pain available here to emotionally manipulate but Egon keeps it so restrained, almost mysterious, tiny chasms of pain stretched across the snow. absolutely brimming with Dread to the point of being downright spooky, every time you return to the school bus sequence it's like being pushed off a cliff. Very good
Structured in a nonlinear style and assembled around a tragic school bus accident in a small town in British Columbia that lays claim to the lives of fourteen children, The Sweet Hereafter is a beautifully written and directed Canadian drama by Atom Egoyan.
The arrival of Mitchell Stephens, a lawyer who is haunted by his own personal tragedies, into the lives of grieving parents, finds him struggling to initiate a civil lawsuit against whatever place he's convinced he'll be able to lay the blame. It's ultimately just another chapter in his continual examination of finding meaning amid chaos and loss, and Ian Holms delivers an outstanding performance as Stephens as he digs into the underbelly of the town and discovers…
Death equals change. Egoyan's quiet examination of traumatic death and severance, of loss and grief, is a cold and somewhat eerie film of hushed conversations and emotional interactions, laced through with fairytale. While I agree with the criticism that the paralleling of the Pied Piper with the loss of the children is somewhat blunt, I find the suggestion that there were debts to be paid by these parents to be a shocking one--but not unwelcome.
The story emphasizes so many aspects of the film's narrative, from survivor's guilt to the emphasis on children (and their perspectives) to the dismantling of a community. Mostly, though, I found the idea of parental debt to be most present, but largely unspoken, in the lawyer's tale. His daughter, adrift, drug-addicted, broken, calling over and over... It seems like you can see the question in Holm's face at times, what did I do wrong.
After a bus crash kills 14 children in a small Canadian town, troubled lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) tries to convince the families to sue, in Atom Eyogan’s drama co-starring Sarah Polley and Bruce Greenwood.
This is one of Holm’s best performances, and he gives a masterclass in quiet anguish, combined with an edge that makes Stephens ever so slightly slippery. His monologue about trying to save his daughter’s life is heartbreaking, and is a real highlight of the film.
The subplot with his daughter adds to the theme of parental responsibility, although it at times seemed to move the focus from the main story at times at the expense of some of the characters in the town.
Themes of…
Atom Egoyan's complex depiction of a community's collective pain cuts to the bone. It never leans into the sensationalistic nature of tragedy. Instead, Egoyan delivers a painful meditation on survivor guilt as he fixates on the many people who grieve for the loss of their loved ones. Observing them lamenting the empty spaces now left in their hearts and how these people must cope with loss always lingering in the back of their minds. The Sweet Hereafter is a deliberately paced and melancholic film; one that embraces the slow-burn to give the viewer time to reflect and dig up the many wounds they thought to be hidden away just as the characters do. It's a heartbreaking film that will stay with me for a long, long while.
Human behaviour can seem very alien. Who knows why others do what they do. We can only observe them. The Sweet Hereafter is a film of trauma, experienced collectively and yet shown as split across individuals. From the same incident, different feelings emerge. This is a film of trauma in the abstract, where we see the emotions and the aftermath, but the incident itself is only seen from afar. What caused the trauma almost doesn't matter, this is a film about people and how they respond to it.
The structure of The Sweet Hereafter cuts across time, playing all its threads side by side, almost simultaneously in a way. The ensemble of characters represent a community now shattered and divided.…
A dark well of swirling sadness pulls at a community devastated by a tragedy in which many young, innocent lives are snatched away. Futures stolen. Hopes and dreams gone forever.
The Sweet Hereafter is a seriously tough watch, and it wears that on its sleeve at all times. The score drops and twists until it's deep inside your mind. Clawing away, as these broken families attempt to come to terms with what has happened.
Meanwhile, the vultures circle.
Ian Holm's leading role as Mitchell Stephens is central to the tone of the film, as he attempts to bury his own family issues under a mountain of legal work and simultaneously seeks to find compensation for the family's loss, and scratch…
