The films of Atom Egoyan, a film director I greatly admire, are not easy to watch. He is one of those filmmakers who chooses and often writes sophisticated scripts himself, which test the attention of the audience and force spectators to get involved in order to follow and understand what is happening on the screen. When he has them hooked, the emotional impact is amplified, because the subjects he deals with are never light. This is the case with his 1997 film ‘The Sweet Hereafter‘, an adaptation (written by Egoyan) of a novel by Russell Banks that describes a tragic story from a remote North American area. (The film is Canadian, but the use of imperial units of speed measurement suggests that the story takes place in the USA). The narrative progresses in three interwoven temporal planes. The sophisticated structure could dampen the emotion, but this does not happen in Egoyan‘s films, on the contrary. This is part of his art.
A small community is struck by a huge tragedy. The yellow school bus that transports the children of the region skids on an icy road in the middle of winter and falls onto the ice of a lake that collapses under the weight and swallows the vehicle. 14 children die. Several are saved, but they are left with physical and psychological traumas that will probably never be erased. Among the survivors is Dolores Driscoll, the bus driver, a woman loved by everyone and who loved her child passengers. The woman claims that she was driving legally, as she had done hundreds of times before on the same road. At first glance, it is a stroke of fate, a huge amount of bad luck. Mitchell Stevens, a lawyer specializing in compensations in such accident cases, comes to the region and tries to convince the parents of the victims to file a class action lawsuit to obtain compensation from the transportation company or the manufacturers of the bus. His investigation stirs up the already tragic atmosphere in the community, reviving or creating tensions between the grieving parents. Stevens is not immune to the pain of parenthood either, his own daughter being the victim of a different but equally tragic fate.
I liked the way the three narrative threads (the one that recounts events in the past preceding the accident, the interviews and investigation immediately after the tragic event, the recollection of the entire plot and the completion of Stevens’ personal drama two years later) alternate and combine, allowing viewers to get to know gradually the characters and dramas of each of them. Whether it is about couples who have lost their children or who are facing the tragic results of the accident for the survivors or about fathers overwhelmed by grief or struggling with the slower but no less definitive loss of their children, in each case the pain is highlighted but also the responsibility is questioned. The lesson is indirect and devoid of rhetoric. The feelings and solidarity expressed through simple gestures matter more than any material compensation. Three of the acting performances seemed remarkable to me in a film in which the entire cast is well chosen and excellently directed. Ian Holm, an actor known for supporting roles in many films, plays the leading role of the lawyer who brings with him not only the toolkit of the profession but also his own tragedy as a father, which may help him better understand and resonate with the pain of those he represents. Sarah Polley, an actress with a rich filmography and a multi-talented filmmaker, who in 2023 received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, plays the role of a girl who survives the accident but is left with a trauma that is difficult to erase. Finally, Gabrielle Rose is the driver whose life is destroyed by the loss of the lives of the children in her care, even if direct responsibility does not exist or cannot be proven. Atom Egoyan has believably and expressively created in ‘The Sweet Hereafter‘ a world stricken by tragedy, populated by heroes who face pain and responsibilities and whose struggle for moral survival has an uncertain ending.