The Sweet Hereafter

A film by Atom Egoyan (Canada, 1997),

with Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood, Alberta Watson, Gabrielle Rose and Sarah Polley.

Winner of the Grand Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.

The small rural community of Sam Dent, British Columbia, is mourning the deaths of its children. They all perished in the school bus accident that happened on what was supposed to be an ordinary winter day. All but one. But what's the price for living? At the same time, a tormented big city lawyer offers to relieve the parents of the victims and to alleviate their angers by taking a class-action suit. Someone has to pay...

The Sweet Hereafter is a tragedy that doesn't paradoxically call for desperate feelings but for life and for people to yearn for the sweet hereafter. Egoyan's thorough narration perfectly conveys the characters' overwhelming malaise as the balance of the community is jeopardized. The cast is extremely well-chosen and restrained in its performance of muted despair. Ian Holm (who worked with as renowned directors as Jean-Jacques Annaud, Ridley Scott, David Cronenberg, Franco Zefirelli and Luc Besson, among others) wonderfully plays both a father, bewildered by his daughter's misfortunes, and lawyer, obsessed with vengeance and impossible compensation. In the meantime, singer-actress Sarah Polley achieves a breakthrough performance as teenager Nicole, who will turn out to be the cornerstone of the resolution of the story. And by the time we learn about each character's frustrations, pains and secrets, the melancholic -but not melodramatic- melodies performed by Polley all along the movie have already pervaded our subconsciouses. In The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan teaches a lesson of humanity and dignity.

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