Rating: 
Summary: Who cares about Titanic???
Review: Atom Egoyan is a master of human emotions: grief, love, loss, avarice -- the good and the bad in people. I wanted to see this movie as soon as it came out, but it didn't play in any theaters next to where I was. I was finally able to see it for the first time in a small, packed theater in Paris, France. Having the video is great, but nothing beats seeing it on the big screen. The crash scene is riveting -- there was a collective gasp in the small screening room. We all knew it was coming, but still all wished it didn't happen. Yet, we all watched as if hypnotized by the images in front of us. Sarah Polley is a wonderful actress, and a pleasure to watch (she is also terrific in "Go," out in the Spring'99). She also has a delightful voice, and the original score is mesmerizing (I strongly recommend the soundtrack). Beautifully photographed and edited, a horrible tale greatly told. The Sweet Hereafter was definitely the best movie of 1997.
Rating:
Summary: Incest
Review: I'm sorry to disagree with everyone but this movie, this story, is about the impotence of incest. The fantasy of a school bus accident that takes the lives of all the children is a metaphor of collateral damage suffered by the innocent.The lawyer (Holm) represents our image of the profession's lowest: an ambulance chaser. Simultaneously, he is a dedicated father, out of sync with his professional role. Early in his life, he suffered his own impotence: A gripping fear of being unable to save his daughter. Wrenched into the role of God, he was prepared to perform the invasive procedure she might need enroute to the hospital, and the trauma of the memory lingers in the form of addiction's continuous relapse and finally, AIDS. Holm stirs the dragon inside the grieving parents. He insists the class action suit is about "anger, not grief." He wants them to join together and punish whoever's responsible. This call to arms is sounded throughout the story and is unmistakably the author's method of reminding us that incest produces victims and is not an innocent expression of love. Polley finds a way to punish her father despite intimating that she'd tell his nasty little secret. Holm asks her if she'll testify and she says, "...If I testify, I'll tell the truth about everything." Does she? No. She lies during the deposition because in so doing, her father loses any chance of collecting from the insurance company, bus manufacturer, etc.. Holm compliments her on her poker face. Looking straight at her father she quite evenly says "thank you." The image that remains is one of her father carrying her from the car to a distant wheelchair, struggling under her weight, and repainting the wheelchair ramp from a dull green to a brilliant red simply because he thinks it will make all the difference in the world.
Rating:
Summary: Bedtime Story
Review: Director Atom Egoyan has been making movies that resemble philosophical systems: cold, remote, and impenetrable. With The Sweet Hereafter, the Armenian-Canadian filmmaker appears to have a change of heart. When the camera stares at a bus driver recounting her side of the story, he's going for some kind of emotional punch there, however slight. The Sweet Hereafter concerns the tragedy of a small Canadian town when a school bus filled with its children fall into a frozen lake. All but one of them drown. And like the ice cracking all around the doomed bus, the narrative splinters in all directions, backward and forward in time. Meanwhile for the parents, the tragedy becomes an unyielding present as they are reminded of their loss constantly, everyday, henceforth. The movie is about the powerful bond parents have for their children; That however estranged they become of each other, an inexplicable connection, both torturous and tender, still remains. There are two competing storytellers in the movie. First, there is the narrator, the big city lawyer who has come to town to solicit clients. It is his story of love and loss that dominates and frames the movie. Next, there's the young adolescent girl who begins to challenge the lawyer's master narrative. She is able to captivate a small crowd with her songs or two youngsters as she reads them a prophetic fairy tale. In the pivotal scene of the movie, the young storyteller takes charge of her life by wrestling away the storytelling prowess of the lawyer and from her father. She turns a moment of tragedy into a locus of personal empowerment. But then again there is a third storyteller in the proceedings. Thefilmmaker who also appears as the primary, magical storyteller. Egoyan cuts up the teenage girl's reading of the Pied Piper tale into smaller pieces and inserts them into the fragments of past and present, creating an effct of mysterious thematic resonance. (Egoyan is a master of film form.) While in his last film, Exotica, a moment in the past fuels the narrative drive of the movie, in The Sweet Hereafter, it is the present, in the ability of an individual to tell her own tale and thus lead her own life, that drives the movie's direction. Both movies are meditations on loss and lingering effect it has on our lives. But the latter movie is also about love, the love we have for our children. Think of the movie as a custody battle between the children's biological parents and their spiritual one. Tragic theatre, according to Nietzsche, is the life and soul of a culture as it asks pertinent questions about the values of the society. "What happened to our children?" this movie seems to be asking. (This is a relevant question to ask in the wake of the student killings in Colorado.) With The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan has forgone his pet themes of film on film but none of the skills in presenting a tale that goes beyond the realm of the explicable: the nature and limits of filial love, the burden of guilt when there is no one to blame, and this obstinate will to live. Not only is the movie intellectually rigorous and emotionally honest, but it also reveals the role of the filmmaker as a magical storyteller, a tribal seer of sorts, interpeting a community's constellation of desire and despair, dreams and nightmares.
Rating:
Summary: Top-drawer "translation" of a novel.
Review: Egoyan has accomplished the near impossible: a movie richer and more interactive than its parent novel. He adds a multi-textured layering of times to supplement the book's multiple points of view. The risk of overly confusing fragmentation of the book's largely linear narrative is counterbalanced by the interweaving of Sarah Polley's voiced-over "Pied Piper of Hamlin": the result is a movie unusually balanced between the town's grief-driven fragmentation and the hope that narrative may make some sense of the fragments and reconnect past to present.
Rating:
Summary: A great movie
Review: THE SWEET HEREAFTER definitely has the best performances of the year (1997), as well as one of the best scripts. At first the movement back and forth into time confused me, but as I understood it more, I really appreciated what a touching, intellegent movie it was. From the father's tragic loss of 2 kids, to a lawyer's struggle with his daughter, this film truly defined great movie making. The best part of the film, however, involved around the girl who wanted to be a rock star- and had a promicing future- but was left confined to a wheelchair. Her narrations and her comparison of the incidents to the pied piper story set up the foundation on which the film was built on.
Rating:
Summary: SUPERB
Review: THIS MOVIE TOUCHES YOU AT THE HEART UNLIKE MOST MOVIES.IT TEACHES YOU TO CHERISH THE THINGS YOU HAVE.THE MOVIE IS WELL WRITTEN AND WELL ACTED.SARAH POLLEY AND IAN HOLM ARE FANTASTIC. ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF 97.
Rating:
Summary: Adam Egoyan at his best!
Review: The Sweet Hereafter delivers very good acting and a plot well worth watching. I thought it was very moving, especially at the end. The song "Courage" that is heard through out the movie adds to it's haunting effect. This movie deserves all the awrds it has won plus more.
Rating:
Summary: An accurate depiction
Review: I must admitt that this was a prfoundly difficult movie to watch. Having lost 2 siblings in auto accidents I can only say that this movie told the reality of what one goes through after such events. The relentless vulturing of lawyers wishing to make money off of people while their emotions are so raw. The overwhelming grief and lack of someone to blame for it. This movie allowed all of those emotions to surface in me. I also found the parralling with The Pied Piper genius. Brilliantly acted and directed. Beautifully filmed. This is at the top of my all time movie list.
Rating:
Summary: IAN HOLM PROVES WHY HE IS THE BEST ACTOR IN THE WORLD
Review: For anyone who has become jaded with the typical junk that Hollywood puts out, here is a fantastic and utterly involving film by Canadian director Atom Egoyan. He has crafted a brilliant film and rejuvanted the art of film. And Ian Holm should win a Oscar for best performance of the century.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: This movie will reasure that movies with a more quiet and subtle persona can still get made in this era of special effets orgies that have taken over Hollywood. It is a beatiful film that explores the depth of human emotion better than most in recent memory.
|
