The Sweet Hereafter: Lauded Canadian Drama Stands the Test of Time
By Liz Braun
Rating: A
Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, released in 1997, is rightly considered one of this country’s most important films.
The drama concerns the aftermath of tragedy in a small town — how people’s lives unravel following the crash of a school bus and the deaths of many of the town’s children.
The film was a cause célèbre upon initial release. It won three prizes at Cannes among innumerable other awards, earned Oscar nominations and appeared on 250 critics’ Top Ten lists that year; polls done by various august bodies consistently place the film in the Top 10 of Canadian films of all time.
Last year, Telefilm announced that The Sweet Hereafter was one of a handful of movies being digitally restored; the 4K restoration had a world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
It will now open in theatres in Toronto and Vancouver.
The movie is based on actual events that happened in Texas in 1989, when a school bus crash and children’s deaths drew an army of opportunistic lawyers into the small town where the tragedy happened.
Russell Banks captured the events in his novel, The Sweet Hereafter. Egoyan wrote the screenplay for the film he directed.
There are several narrative threads, and the film moves back and forth in time. The late Ian Holm plays the lawyer who comes to tiny Sam Dent, British Columbia, to convince grieving parents someone should be sued for the bus crash that killed their children. But we’ve seen him on the phone with his adult daughter, who is an addict, so we know he’s likewise experienced the loss of a child.
The grieving parents in the town are played by well-known Canadian actors, including Tom McCamus, Bruce Greenwood and Arsinee Khanjian; the cast also includes late actors Maury Chaykin, Alberta Watson and David Hemblen, so anyone who saw the film in its initial run will experience an odd, additional dimension of loss upon re-watching.
The people of the town, their secrets and their problems, are slowly brought to the surface after the bus crash. A teenaged Sarah Polley plays Nicole, one of the bus crash survivors, an adolescent whose testimony eventually changes the course of events for herself and for the entire town.
In a pre-crash scene she reads Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” to the children she babysits, and various verses pop up throughout in voiceover; the children are led away by the piper and disappear, all but the one who couldn’t keep up.
It’s confounding to think that 27 years have passed since The Sweet Hereafter was first released. The film is beautifully shot by director of photography Paul Sarossy, the performances are wonderful, the experience of re-watching the film is transporting.
Seeing it on the big screen is a rare opportunity.
The Sweet Hereafter. Written and directed by Atom Egoyan, based on the novel by Russell Banks. Starring Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, and Tom McCamus. In theatres in Vancouver November 5 and in Toronto November 16 with Atom Egoyan in attendance November 16 at The Revue Theatre.