Alberta Watson in The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

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I just read Russell Banks’ novel, The Sweet Hereafter. I was curious to see if the novel was richer and more layered than the movie. It is not. I'm not criticizing the book. The movie is that good. (Banks collaborated on the production, and on the DVD commentary as well.)

I can't think of one other case in the history of movies where the director managed to cover every single major theme and incident covered in the book. As far as I can see, the only thing Atom Egoyan dropped from the screenplay was an epilogue about a demolition derby. This could have been dramatic on screen, but the loss of the car crashes was more than compensated by the richness and appropriateness of the Pied Piper analogy that Egoyan added to the narrative. This addition probably makes it just about the only case of book-to-movie adaptation where the movie is actually more literary than the literature, and the book is more cinematic than the film.

There is only one way to sum the movie up. It is perfect. The photography is magnificent. The music is chilling. The story is richly layered. Almost every character is complex. The source material is outstanding. The script is a perfect conversion to the screen. The structure of the narrative is devilishly clever. The casting is spot-on, and includes some of the best actors on the planet, led by Ian Holm. And when it comes to subtle and elegant direction, Atom Egoyan is the man. Best of all, it's not a boring art-house film, but a straightforward character-based narrative (Although it is not sequential, it is not confusing at all. The chronology is exceptionally audience-oriented - it is just done to add some mystery and audience involvement to the viewing experience.)

What the hell more is there to say?

The Sweet Hereafter winds three stories together. All three involve the loss of children.

The main story is about a small Canadian town which one day lost almost its entire child population in a bus crash. This plot shows real people, some of them touchingly simple, dealing with the tragedy in whatever ways they can muster.

The second story is about a lawyer who comes to that small town to do a bit of upscale ambulance-chasing, and who once heroically saved his baby when she was little, only to lose her in a different way, to heroin addiction. This subplot holds the most brilliant moment of the movie, when the lawyer gets a call from his drug-addict daughter, and she tells him she is HIV-positive. He knows that is entirely possible because of her lifestyle, but he doesn't really believe her because he thinks it's just another one of her scams to get some drug money from him. She's pulled scams like this for 15 years. She'd want money for a ticket home. He sent her the ticket, waited at the airport, but she never showed because she sold the ticket for drug money. Dozens of scams over the years. Now, if you were he, would you believe her this time when she asks for money for medication and medical care? Should he send it to her? Between Ian Holm and director Egoyan, they convey all these conflicted feelings to us without words. Astounding.

The third story is Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the famous children's story in which the village ultimately lost its children. All three stories reflect back upon each other in ways sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious. If you remember The Pied Piper, there were two causes of sadness. One was that the villagers had lost their children. The other was that one of the children, a lad with a crutch, was left behind when his playmates went through the mountain with the Piper. And his life was the saddest of all, because he would be doomed to a childhood without companionship, and a lifetime without a generation. Nicole is the parallel in the main story.

Ian Holm must have drawn about the hardest acting role in history. Imagine that the entire town lost its child population, and he's the lawyer hanging out like a vulture over the carcasses, trying to convince the families to sue somebody. He had to come off sensitive enough, yet tricky and conniving enough, for those families to hire him, and he had to do it all so subtly that we the audience could still identify with him. Nobody in his right mind would even have taken the role. Holm not only took it, but he made it into an acting lesson. It's possibly even better than Joe Don Baker in Mitchell.

I'll bet you thought I would make it through this one without a joke, didn't you?

Great, great movie. When people asked my favorite movie, I used to say I couldn't decide between Casablanca and A Clockwork Orange because they are so different. Now I don't have to make that choice. It is The Sweet Hereafter .

Nudity Report: The nudity, full-frontal at that, came from Alberta Watson , who plays Madeline on La Femme Nikita. I suppose she must be in her mid-40s', but she still looks great with her clothes off.

Critics Vote: Four from Ebert. About 11 from Berardinelli (he likes it as much as I do, and picked it as his top movie of the year.)

IMDb Summary: 8.1 out of 10. Top 200 of all time.

Box Office: It took in $4 million at the U.S. box, a few Beaver Bucks in Canada, and barely re-paid the investors. What a shame that more people have not seen it.

DVD Info: Includes full-length commentary by Russell Banks (author of the novel) and Egoyan, a videotaped discussion with the same two guys, an illustrated version of Browning's Pied Piper of Hamelin, and an Egoyan talk show appearance. The DVD is 2.35:1 widescreen anamorphic, letterboxed. The transfer is superb. Colors beautiful, images sharp. I told you, the damn thing is perfect.


Written by: Scoopy …courtesy of Scoopy.net