The Sweet Hereafter **** (1997, Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Maury Chaykin, Peter Donaldson, Bruce Greenwood, Caerthan Banks) – Classic Movie Review 769

A tragic bus accident in which 20 children are killed affects everyone in a snow-clad Canadian small town. The bus still lies under ice.

Ian Holm stars as Mitch Stephens the out-of-town lawyer, troubled by a drug-abuser daughter, who arrives to talk the victims’ parents into taking legal action. He visits them to profit from the tragedy by stirring up their anger and launching a class action suit.

But the small town community is paralysed by its hurt and anger, and so can’t let go, until one schoolgirl, confined to a wheelchair as a result of the accident, finds the courage to lead the way towards healing. The moral is that the grief coming from loss can’t be eased by judging the cause of it.

Giving electric performances, Holm and Sarah Polley (as the schoolgirl Nicole Burnell) are superb, and so are the striking cinematography of Paul Sarossy and the moody score of Mychael Danna.

But The Sweet Hereafter is really Atom Egoyan’s triumph: he deservedly won Oscar nominations in 1998 as both director and writer, intelligently adapting Russell Banks’s disturbing novel. Egoyan won the Grand Jury Prize, the FIPRESCI Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at Cannes in 1997 but the Palme d’Or eluded him.

Maury Chaykin, Peter Donaldson, Bruce Greenwood and Caerthan Banks also star.

Banks also wrote the novel Affliction, the basis of another 1997 movie, with Nick Nolte.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 769 derekwinnert.com