Customer Reviews

The Sweet Hereafter (Widescreen Collector's Edition) [VHS]

5 star:		(93)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I can't fathom anyone watching this movie through without being deeply moved, at times disturbed, and shaken to some degree. It really does delve down into the dark night of the soul, like the cinematic equivalent of a Sylvia Plath poem. It's a film about loss. Innocence lost, the questionability of ideals and motives. The end of childhood. Yet Egoyan doesn't deliver a totally bleak jeremiad here, either. Human beings are flawed, but they also are capable of growth and wisdom, though both are hard earned.

As usual with Egoyan films, nature is at a distance and a remove from human beings and the turmoil brimming over inside them. The beautiful BC vistas are in contrast to the tragic event that occurs. It's a bit like the end of Moby Dick, when the Pequod is smashed and sinks, while the sun smiles down serenely on the calm sea. I think Egoyan's getting at the same thing Melville is, as well. It's an existentialist's way of looking at the universe. If we're looking for a higher power to bail us out, we're out of luck. Our other moral constructs are pretty shaky, as well. We tend to think a little better of ourselves than is often the case.

As is also usual, Egoyan assembles an excellent cast, that feed off of each other's honest performances. No wrong notes here. Cinematography also up to the usual high standard. My appreciation for Egoyan's work increases with each new film I see. Personal thanks to the reviewer who led me to the works of this auteur director, in the best sense of that term.

BEK

If you have children, plan to have children, or know of any children living in your area seek this movie out. From it's haunting opening music, to its somber, yet life affirming tone, The Sweet Hereafter is one helluva soul jerkin' drama.

It gives you a gut punch/ sucker punch combo all the way through, a harrowing study of the reverberations and impact of an instant.

Sarah Polley is an otherworldly talent, portraying a child possessing creepy wisdom and the voice of a dew eyed angel.

People still talk about this film today, because it entrenches itself into the minds of viewers with a conscience. Quite possibly one of the saddest, smartest, and touching films I've ever seen.

The soundtrack is mesmerizing, you will feel compelled to purchase it.

P.S. If this movie doesn't get to you in some way your heart is but a cinder.

I'm sorry to disagree with everyone but this movie, this story, is about the impotence of incest. The fantasy of a school bus accident that takes the lives of all the children is a metaphor of collateral damage suffered by the innocent.

The lawyer (Holm) represents our image of the profession's lowest: an ambulance chaser. Simultaneously, he is a dedicated father, out of sync with his professional role. Early in his life, he suffered his own impotence: A gripping fear of being unable to save his daughter. Wrenched into the role of God, he was prepared to perform the invasive procedure she might need enroute to the hospital, and the trauma of the memory lingers in the form of addiction's continuous relapse and finally, AIDS.

Holm stirs the dragon inside the grieving parents. He insists the class action suit is about "anger, not grief." He wants them to join together and punish whoever's responsible. This call to arms is sounded throughout the story and is unmistakably the author's method of reminding us that incest produces victims and is not an innocent expression of love.

Polley finds a way to punish her father despite intimating that she'd tell his nasty little secret. Holm asks her if she'll testify and she says, "...If I testify, I'll tell the truth about everything." Does she? No. She lies during the deposition because in so doing, her father loses any chance of collecting from the insurance company, bus manufacturer, etc.. Holm compliments her on her poker face. Looking straight at her father she quite evenly says "thank you."

The image that remains is one of her father carrying her from the car to a distant wheelchair, struggling under her weight, and repainting the wheelchair ramp from a dull green to a brilliant red simply because he thinks it will make all the difference in the world.

Without trying to be haughty, I feel truly sorry for reviewers who disliked this film. You really missed the boat. This film is so subtly and poignantly beautiful, so well crafted, so perfectly scored and acted, that my wife and I literally puffed out a long, deep "Wow" upon the film's conclusion. The character portrayals, the metaphors, the messages relayed concerning human nature and our society, also make this film an excellent subject for intellectual discussion. We rented this film 10 months ago, and still reflect on it regularly. If you enjoy films that make you think, that require you to participate with your mind to garner the film's intent and purpose, and that can state all that needs to be said through a well-filmed, perfectly conveyed facial expression, you will love this movie.

The simple, smooth lives of a small Canadian town nestled in snow-capped peaks of British Columbia are jarred by a schoolbus accident that takes the lives of some kids and brutally hurts others.

The film intimately tiptoes into the homes of affected parents, each with their own perspective and mien, but connected by a lawyer from out of town bent upon instigating them to dig deeper into the tragedy's cause and sue those responsible.

But what makes this caper special is how deeply we relate to each character in the film. The lawyer for instance (played impeccably by Holm) may come across as a swindling ambulance-chaser at first, but as much as we feel ready to dismiss his callous opportunism we can't because we are privy to his own personal anguish -- it's almost as if his keenness to help the town were driven by his search for an outlet for his own pent-up emotions. There is a lingering subplot about incest in one family, which in hindsight is pivotal to the film, but there's never a condescending tone about it.

In fact, The Sweet Hereafter impetuosly blackballs the idea of revenge or malice in coming to terms with a loss of this nature and scope. Instead it sanely depicts a community caring for itself through mutual healing. Even a lie told delicately and with the right timing can be a much-needed suture on a gaping wound. It's stirring to see how this plays out.

If you've seen Exotica, you are familiar with Egoyan's lyrical screenplays. The narrative here is a brilliant riff on the tale of the Pied Piper; it comes on in voiceover at just the right points but manages to signify something different each time. Danna's exotic score lends a sombre yet serene texture to the anxious proceedings. The landscape is repeatedly expressed as a richly sweeping expanse of snowy ground spread beneath low clouds. Naked emotion weighs in on every frame, a welcome change from Hollywoodesque kitsch.

In a nutshell, the film has virtually every attribute that an intelligent moviegoer looks for in a film. Couldn't recommend it highly enough if you have the appetite for meaningful cinema.

What can I say about "The Sweet Hereafter"? Well, without hyperbole, Canadian director Atom Egoyan has basically turned Russel Banks popular novel into one of the most touching and masterfully-crafted films ever made! This is the story of smalltown tragedy in British Columbia. Fourteen schoolchildren are killed in a freak school bus accident, and their families, friends, and neighbors, each devestated in their own way, tries to carry on with their lives. A manipulative laywer (played with stark intensity by Ian Holm) comes to the town to try to organize a class action lawsuit, but the lawyer is carrying some emotional baggage of his own, and Egoyan creates some beautiful plot "counterpoint" by weaving the townpeople's and the lawyers tragedies together. Egoyan takes what COULD have been fodder for another melodramatic Hollywood tearjerker, and turns it into a film of great depth and substance. Egoyan has a wonderfully lyrical sense of film composition, and he masterfully intermixes scenes from the present, with flashbacks to the past, and slowly unviels the the complex lives of his characters (including some even deeper tragedies than the bus accident!) Ever the innovator, Egoyan even manages to blend spoken poetry into the story, as Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is used as a powerfully symbolic conterpoint to the story we are seeing on screen. The whole cast is quite excellent, but young Canadian actress Sarah Polley (as the pivotal character of Nicole, a would-be rock singer and survivor of the bus crash) just about steals the show! I won't give away one of the film's most surprising plot-points (although some Amazon reviewers have already let the cat out of the bag), but I will just say that Polley's dazed facial expression near the end of the story is a beatiful piece of acting...and speaks volumes more than any big, convoluted Hollywood "comeuppance" scene could ever achieve! "The Sweet Hereafter" is a film that should not be missed by any film buff! I have seen this film at least five times now and I can attest that it only gets better with repeated vieweings, there is simply too much going on underneath the surface of the story to absorb all of it's issues on the first glance. This very "human" film is the complete antithesis of everything that is wrong with the current Hollywood scene, and with this emotionally gripping film, Atom Egoyan has cemented his place among the world's finest filmmakers!

The astonishing thing about this movie is what it avoided: cheap emotional shots. Instead, this movie presents a patchwork of flashbacks and character mosaics in how the town tragedy affected the citizens. The subject matter is not happy, yet there is something beautiful, scary and engaging to it. I am not an emotional person and not easily won over by sad stories. But this had me glued to the screen. I was so impressed, I went out and rented Exotica the next day.

I am dissapointed by movies, as a general rule. Few movies, even independent ones, dare to speak about anything but the obvious. Some movies have great acting and visual style. Others have a structure that enhance the story and themes, or explore uncommonly profound themes. It's rare that one finds all of these things together in one mind-blowing film.

The Sweet Hereafter is one such mindblowing film. It is about a terrible bus accident that kills 15 children, although we only see it from afar, and halfway into the movie - the accident is a pivotal temporal point but not the focus. The focus is on the actions surrounding that accident, and what they tell us. All the while, the story is not told in chronological order, but more or less in thematical order. Past, present and future are shuffled effortlessly, because the accident is our anchor to the story.

The story concerns many people, but especially one Mitchell Stephens, played by Ian Holm, as a lawyer hired by the Walkers (one of the victimized families) to start a class action lawsuit. He hops from family to family, from evidence to evidence, in increasingly manipulative attempts to rally town inhabitants to his cause, while the sordid secrets of the community threaten to derail him at every turn. A survivor, Nicole, is now handicapped and holds an important testimony.

Ian Holm never had a leading role before this movie. Watching his incredible performance, I want to scream bloody murder. He's perfect. That this guy can't get a leading role is mind-bogglingly insane. The other actors, though less well-known, don't unbalance the movie at all.

At first, it seems that the movie is a simple left-right conflict, with the hypocrite and conniving community on one hand, and the profiteering lawyer from the big city on the other hand. And it seems that most critics have interpreted it as such, even taking position for one or the other when no such bias is apparent in the movie. I think that says more about their statist political views than it says about the movie.

The subtextual richness of this movie is stunning. Using the story of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", it compares Stephens' cynical crusade to channel the parents' anger, as well as the independence-destroying authority of Nicole's father, to the Pied Piper story. In essence, they are leading people to more disaster, the former social and the latter psychological.

Stephens' blatant use of invented narrative to coax parents into joining his case brings up the evil uses of storytelling in our society. We see Stephens' desire to lose himself in his case and the town around him, we assume because of her daughter's drug addiction, masterfully played by Iam Holm. The question of responsibility comes up repeatedly, as people's desire to find a guilty party blinds them to the fact that some things are simply accidents. Some of these themes find great resonance in today's lawsuit frenzies used to undermine capitalism.

If there is one thing I find lacking in the movie, it is a lack of moral center. Nicole does provide us with a possibly moral action at the end of the movie, which I will not reveal, but the rest of the movie is very morally bleak from a rational perspective. It is not that I found it depressing, but simply morally bleak. Then again, that is what reality is like - as most people lack such moral center and desire to do good, messes like this one are common.

The movie was directed by Atom Egoyan, a Canadian director. I'm not a big fan of his, and I didn't like Exotica, but he has to be good to have a movie like this in him. Perhaps the fact that he didn't create this world has something to do with it. As for the movie being Canadian, it is set in British Columbia, and the most obvious indicator of this is that there is no media circus surrounding the whole affair. But written as a fable-like story, it could be set in a great number of places. It is not the accident itself which resonates with the viewer, or the town, but the truth of the movie.

Few films skate the edges of perfection like this one. And few are as difficult to pin down, classify, explain and put in its rightful box. Atom Egoyan's, 'The Sweet Hereafter,' approaches the burning star of creative brilliance like few other films have. Mesmerizing to the very end, this film simply overwhelms. Those looking for easy answers best look elsewhere.

Based on the Russel Banks' novel of the same name, 'The Sweet Hereafter,' weaves the deceptively straightforward tale of Hamelin's Pied Piper into a modern texture of mind-numbing complexity.

The premise appears simple enough. An isolated community in the snow-covered valleys of British Columbia finds itself paralyzed with grief after a number of local children are killed in a tragic bus accident. Who or what was the cause of such a tragedy? The community dares not pursue such a piercing question, lest long-kept secrets burst to the fore. Adultery, sexual abuse, and repressed malice towards thy neighbor all foment below the surface until one big-city lawyer, Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), descends upon the community determined to rid it of its rats.

Enter the piper. Mitchell arrives with a mission. To build up a case of negligence against whatever or whoever is responsible for the loss of so many young lives. To place blame where it is due. But what drives the piper? Mitchell makes the rounds of the children's families, dredging up the tragedy anew, taking the bandages off yet-unhealed wounds. Compensation. Justice. Accidents are simply unheard of in Mitchell's world. Humans are always able to control their destinies. As Mitchell stirs up emotions, self-interest raises its ugly head as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in the struggle for a hefty settlement.

Mitchell shatters the communal peace in his single minded pursuit of purifying the town of its undirected and unreleased anger. But whose anger? Unable to except his estranged relationship with his drug-addicted daughter, Mitchell is a man in denial of his own demons, fighting against his own rage, his own helplessness. Once he could protect his daughter, 'control' her, but now he only hears her hysterical voice on the phone, asking for money, craving for a father. A father whose mission to exorcise others' pain has left his own intact and out of control. Swelling with rage, pain and frustration, Mitchell spirals towards his imagined catharsis. Lawsuit, settlement, satisfaction. Mitchell's hopes that the victims' reparations will heal his wounds as well.

Yet, one survivor refuses to play Mitchell's game of scapegoat. Strapped to a wheelchair, Nicole (Sarah Polley) has been relieved of both her dreams and nightmares--her dream to be a singer and her abuse at the hands of 'daddy,' her stepfather, manager. But Daddy wants money now.

Nicole finally puts an end to the witch-hunt that masquerades as concern. The children, already dead, don't need to be raised only to die again. Nicole's testimony chops off the swollen finger of blame. No culprit. No one to point a finger at. Only victims, for accidents do happen. Nicole's behavior begs the question: who among us sinners can rightfully raise the flag of wronged innocence?

What Egoyan has created with the rich material of Mr. Banks is nothing short of a masterpiece. A small sliver of our frail and sordid existence is made real through Egoyan's intricate storytelling. Each family's tragedy is layered on top of each other with grace and honesty. Fragile humans caught in this cruel wheel of life. Egoyan's breathtaking shots---whether they be close-ups of a baby or snowy panoramas--wrap you up in each unfolding layer of the story. Eerie, harrowing music whispers in the background as you read every twitch in Ian Holm's tense face or in stare in bewilderment at Sarah Polley's fathomless smile. A miracle to behold!

This film is compelling in its storytelling, peeling back layer after layer of human emotion, until all that is left is that which is primal. Beautifully nuanced, if somewhat ponderously slow at times, this film is not for the action oriented viewer. It is a film for the more patient and discerning viewer, the one who will allow the story to unfold in its own good time. It is this viewer who will derive the most enjoyment from this cinematic gem.

The story is really several stories that are threaded into one tapestry of events. The main thread involves a school bus accident that resulted in the death of fourteen children in a small British Columia town in Canada. A big, city slicker lawyer, Mitchell Stevens (Ian Holm), waltzes into town on the heels of the tragedy to see if a class action suit, arising out of the bus accident, lies against someone, anyone for huge monetary damages.

As Stevens interviews those prospective clients, his own troubles are revealed to the viewer and center around his drug addicted daughter, who deftly manipulates him. Scenes with his daughter, which suggest just how out of control his daughter's life is, correlate nicely to the way the lives of the townspeople have spun out of control since the bus accident that took so many young lives. Stevens is as bereft as the townspeople who have lost their children. The lawyer's feeling of guilt over his daughter's seemingly hopeless condition, miirror the hopelessness felt by the townspeople in light of the overwhelming tragedy that has befallen them.

The town has its secrets, however. One of them involves an attractive, and talented teenager, Nichole (Sarah Polley). When the viewer first sees her, with her is a long haired, seemingly supportive and tender man. For some inexplicable reason the viewer may take him for her boyfriend, even though all they are doing is eating ice cream, only to discover that he is actually her father. Like the lawyer, Nichole must contend with a very personal and secret tragedy in her young life.

The brief scene that makes clear the true nature of Nichole's relationship with her father is shown in a way that belies its inherent corruption. It seemlessly transitions its way into the film, and the viewer really has to think twice about that which the viewer has just seen, as the setting seems almost romantic, a setting that belies the profound putrescence of the reality of the scene.

The threads of the film's story are woven in such a way that time and scene shifts are somewhat abrupt and may seem a little disjointed to the viewer, which has the net effect of keeping the viewer a little off balance. The tenor of the film, however, is set to perfection by Nichole's monotone voice over reading of Robert Browning's lyrical poem, "The Pied Piper of Hamlin". Her reading gives the viewer a feeling of alienation and despair. It also leaves the viewer wondering whether the pied piper is an allusion to her father or the lawyer. Watch the film, and you be the judge.

Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, and this cast of mostly unknowns, give wonderful performances worthy of note, compelling and moving. The film, as does an onion, has many layers to be peeled back. It is a film to be savored and viewed again and again. "The Sweet Hereafter" is sweet, indeed.