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The Sweet Hereafter Movie Review

The Sweet Hereafter is a 1997 Canadian drama film directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Ian Holm. It’s one very toxic, immensely overrated movie.

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“You’d make a good poker player, kid“

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A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors’ and victims’ families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. This movie is often cited among the greatest films that Canada has ever produced, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this assessment as I find its intentions deeply problematic.

On the surface, its premise is ripe for an excellent exploration of grief and how tragedy can impact people and especially smaller communities, and although the movie did explore that to a degree, it also went above and beyond to state that life is ultimately meaningless. Yes, in more than a couple of conversations we see not existentialism, but pure, unadulterated nihilism, the kind that I will continue to vehemently oppose.

There is this one sequence where Ian Holm’s character reminisces about a spider bite that almost killed his daughter and how she is now a drug addict. The point here is that had she not survived in the first place, it wouldn’t have made any difference for this man as he will lose her daughter either way.

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This type of viewpoint is not just wrong, but also dangerous to inflict on your viewers, and even more dangerous was the fact that all of these critics went to support this type of movie that wallowed in the characters’ misery while never including any respite or hope whatsoever. And that is the problem with this movie in a nutshell – I have no problem with depressing, cold movies, but they need to have a point. This one has none.

The Sweet Hereafter is beautifully scored with an interesting mixture of old-fashioned and more modern music incorporated. The cinematography is also fantastic, making great use of its snowy Canadian setting. The acting performances are also terrific with Ian Holm delivering one of his best works to date and Sarah Polley impressing in a smaller, but important role.

But the problem here was that Atom Egoyan still failed to elevate this source material with more cinematic elements as the book really wasn’t suited for the film treatment, which is evident through countless long conversations and monologuing. The pacing is also glacially slow and the movie’s coldness was difficult to take. It’s a well made film, but one that left me feeling nothing, which was maybe the point, but I despise that point altogether.

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