The Sweet Hereafter

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,…

Marcissus

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…

Ethan Colburn

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…

nick

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…

Scott Tobias

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…

Mike D'Angelo

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…

Sally Jane Black

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…

Darren Carver-Balsiger

Justice isn’t always within reach, and lies aren’t always simple deflections of truth. Destiny, on occasion, seeks to scribble outside the lines we trace for our lives, leaving hideous blotches behind that refuse to be bowdlerized. When providence fails, we cannot but sigh.

Jerry

When I started watching Atom Egoyan's film in chronological order a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had only seen two of his movies. I was incorrect as I watched The Sweet Hereafter years ago. It's a deeply moving, emotional and extraordinary film. As soon as I read the…

DavidSkolnick