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Very artsy is the best way for me to start my description of The Sweet Hereafter. Writer and director Atom Egoyan beautifully takes the novel by Russell Banks and puts it on the big screen. The film focuses on the aftermath of a deadly school bus crash in Canada. Most of the story focuses on attorney Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm, The Fifth Element) as he attempts to get the families of the victims to start a class action lawsuit to recover damages. The crash itself occurs on a wintering day when the bus runs off the road and sinks into the ice, killing many children of the small Canadian community. Though much of the focus is on that tragedy, the director also takes us back in time to the upbringing of Stephens' own baby daughter and various events such as a near-fatal spider attack. Stephens is basically trying to find reasons for what went wrong when raising his now drug addicted and mentally unstable grown child Zoe (Caerthan Banks). So as the town tries to place blame for the tragedy, Stephens is also reliving the various episodes of his daughter's life and dealing with the guilt from it. Egoyan uses lots of different camera shots which gives many parts of the film a light, airy feeling, while in other parts he mixes in black and white footage. The whole film has a very beautiful feel to it. The cast includes Maury Chaykin, Gabrielle Rose, Peter Donaldson, Bruce Greenwood, Brooke Johnson, Tom McCamus, Sarah Polley, and others. As you might conclude, I did enjoy The Sweet Hereafter, and as such I give it ten couches for the About-Movies.com rating, even though it is an emotionally tuff subject lacking nudity.
Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:49:22 AM |