4/4  Now or Never
One of the best movies, by a director who doesn't give the audience anything at face value. The challenges that Atom Egoyan presents are indeed most welcome. Good acting, and good balancing of the different stories. I can't wait to rewatc... (read full)

4/4  The Sweet Hereafter Quick Review
its the best for me. Great Drama !!! Directing, and cinematography is amazing. all actors are perfect. i want to see more Egoyan's work

2/5 The Sweet Hereafter of Bogus Film Criticism
  by Turfseer (New York, N.Y.)
'The Sweet Hereafter' concerns the tragic effect of a school bus crash on the townspeople in a rural town. Many critics were afraid to judge the film on its own merits and placed it on a pedestal where they declared such a film "off limits" to any kind of real criticism. Unconsciously the subject matter affected their judgments. Here was a film about a very delicate subject--the death of innocent children. The characters in the film (parents of the deceased children) were all shattered. It was as if criticizing the film was akin to criticizing these parents as well as any parent who had experienced such a tragic loss. But from the point of view of effective drama, the film is virtually a complete failure. Very little of it rings true at all.

Except for some very nice cinematography and an affecting musical score, 'The Sweet Hereafter' plods along at a snail's pace. The director's intent is to display the range of emotions these parents felt in the aftermath of losing their children. But what is so profound about focusing on such grief? The main character, a negligence lawyer, goes around the town convincing the parents to join in a class action lawsuit against the unspecified person or situation which caused the terrible accident. Most of the parents he sees agree to join the lawsuit (a lot of these scenes with the parents are drawn out and could have been easily condensed). The lawyer finally encounters one man who gives him a hard time. This is perhaps the most dramatic conflict that comes up during the film. But this one towns person's opposition to joining the lawsuit is completely vague. Why is he so against joining the lawsuit? Why is so angry at the lawyer? Because he feels the lawyer is profiting at the expense of the townspeople? Even so, is it really believable that he doesn't want to get to the bottom of what happened as opposed to simply dropping the whole case?

The ending of the film is even more unbelievable. The negligence lawyer never seems to have a definitive plan to try the case. He alludes to various factors that caused the accident, such as a faulty guard rail or a defective bolt inside the bus. A real negligence lawyer would never have taken such a huge case in the first place without feeling that he could be successful. It almost seems like he thinks that he uncover the 'truth' during the discovery process. A real lawyer would have already had some tangible evidence (already uncovered) that would have convinced him to go forward. Furthermore, when the young survivor lies in her deposition, stating that the bus driver was driving too fast, the seemingly smart lawyer folds up like a deck of cards and decides not to cross-examine her. A real lawyer could have made mince-meat of her but he chooses to quit the case and leave all his clients in the lurch. In real life he probably would have been hauled in front of an ethics board.

And why does the young survivor decide to lie in the end? Why does she lie knowing that she is accusing the innocent bus driver? Why does she want to case to 'go away'? Is it that she's so traumatized by the accident that she simply wants to forget about it? Everything is left so open and vague in this film that we never understand any of the characters' motivations.

Lastly, there's a lot of lame talk (mostly over the phone) between the lawyer and his drug-addicted, rebellious daughter. Seemingly there's supposed to be some kind of parallel between the lawyer's personal angst and the angst of the townspeople (this is the lawyer's defense when that one townspeople berates him before the climactic deposition scene). All this conflict between the lawyer and the daughter is gratuitous and simply does not work cinematically. We hardly ever see those two characters together and their conflict is basically a separate story which has no real place in this film.

The Sweet Hereafter basically lacks substance. It congratulates itself for displaying the raw emotion of grief but lacks a central antagonist to engage us. An examination of grief in itself is not enough to sustain an entire story. Whenever conflicts do arise in this film, they are episodic, unclearly motivated and for the most part, lacking the ring of truth. If you're strictly into atmosphere and mood, this is the film for you. But if you're looking for a strong story arc with convincing conflicts, you will not find it in 'The Sweet Hereafter'.



4/5 3 stars out of 4
  by One-Line Film Reviews (Easton, MD)
The Bottom Line:

Overpraised in many quarters, The Sweet Hereafter is a well-crafted look into the lives of people who have had their lives racked by tragedy, but its clinical detachment and an unnecessary incest subplot prevent Egoyan's film from achieving greatness.

5/5 bone chilling drama at its best
  by Matthew G. Sherwin (last seen screaming at Amazon customer service)
The Sweet Hereafter is a film you're not likely to forget anytime soon. The movie portrays human beings as they can really be--greedy, confused after a huge tragic loss, in denial of guilt and more. The plot moves along at a good pace and the storyline is absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately, this movie is not for everyone since the plot is rather haunting and dark; this is anything but a family film. The actors do a superb job and the cinematography is excellent.

When the action begins, an ambulance chasing lawyer Mitchell Stevens (played by Ian Holm) races up to a small Canadian town after a school bus accident has cost the lives of most of the small town's children. Mitchell approaches the townsfolk to build a huge lawsuit against the people whom he believes he can determine to be guilty for having caused the accident. Perhaps the school bus wasn't regularly maintained--or maybe the manufacturer of the bus used poor quality bolts; Mitchell doesn't care, he just wants a piece of the action.

Of course, some embrace the idea of a lawsuit--but yet others want to forget about any trial and they make no bones about it. In particular, look for Tom McCamus who plays Sam Burnell, a father with a dirty secret and Sarah Polley plays Sam's daughter Nicole. While Sam wants the lawsuit to pay medical bills and probably make a buck off this lemon, his daughter Nicole is not so comfortable with this idea. We come to see that so many of the townsfolk have dark secrets of their own; and even the lawyer Mitchell Stevens has a rather troubled relationship with his daughter Zoë (played wonderfully by Caerthan Banks). There is also the very emotionally scarred bus driver who survived the accident, Dolores Discolt (Gabrielle Rose), who eventually makes it plain that she doesn't want to be judged in a court of law by a jury made up of people who don't know her at all.

As secrets and the rest of the plot unfold, questions arise: Will Dolores change her mind about the lawsuit and want it after all? What about the father of two children who saw the tragedy as he followed the bus in his pickup--will Billy (Bruce Greenwood) ever change his mind and decide a lawsuit is a good idea? And what about Mitchell's own relationship with his daughter Zoë--is there any hope for things to get better between the two of them? Keep an eye out for excellent, practically seamless flashbacks and flash forwards that really impress me with just how smoothly they are woven into the film.

The DVD comes with a plethora of extras: we get an audio commentary by film director Adam Egoyan; and there is a Charlie Rose interview with Egoyan as well. I especially liked the "Q & A" extra with several members of the cast. We even get some biographies and filmographies, too.

All in all, The Sweet Hereafter is an excellent film that I highly recommend. Reserve it for a time when you can handle a heavy film about people and how they can truly be when confronted with a seemingly insurmountable loss. You won't regret watching it.


4/5 Hauntingly beautiful!!
  by T. Steffes (South Dakota, USA)
I saw this movie after I had read about it in a list of 100 daring movies. It truly is, in so many ways. The scene with the school bus is one I will never forget. There are many layers to this movie, and I enjoyed them.

5/5 Quiet, dreamlike, somber, and riveting
  by Eric J. Anderson (Ankeny, Iowa)
Don't watch this if you are subject to becoming depressed by sad movies. The Sweet Hereafter is, however, one of those films that has a dreamlike quality that sucks you in. The art of it is very appealing to me. Some will say it is slow, too quiet, a downer. But I think the emotion of it provides more than enough intensity.

The movie is based on a novel which is itself somewhat based on a true story of a small town in Texas where tragically many of the town's children were killed in a schoolbus accident, and ambulance-chasing lawyers descended on the town like a swarm of hungry locusts. The townspeople eventually received hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from a company which may or may not have really been responsible for the accident.

The movie takes this premise in a different direction. It focuses on one lawyer who comes to town and interviews witnesses, survivors, and moms and dads who lost their kids. The lawyer himself is going through a vaguely similar personal crisis -- losing his daughter to drugs. Great disruption is bubbling in the town because of the tragedy and the impending, potentially enriching, lawsuit. The ending is a surprise, turning everything upside down for a reason that has nothing to do with the accident, and no one will ever likely know the real reason.

What is the movie really about? It is about grief turning to boiling anger, mixed with greed. It is about the secret lives of ordinary people in small towns. It is about how justice can be meted out in strange ways.

I saw this several years ago, and then again this week. Both times I was riveted.