The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
Directed by Atom Egoyan
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. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage.
9 connections found
View:
9 connections, in both directions
What critics compared The Sweet Hereafter to
(Atom Egoyan’s 1997 tragedy, The Sweet Hereafter, with its ensemble cast and explicit allusions to the Pied Piper legend, also seems a likely point of reference.)
The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
Manchester By The Sea resembles Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, but Lonergan’s film has even greater humanity, a sense of humor and a precise observational mode that understands that life, in all its randomness, franticness and beauty, must continue during the grieving process, even if most movies make it seem like responsibilities and desires sleep for grief and sorrow.
He has entwined a present-day narrative with flashback sequences somewhat in the manner of Atom Egoyan’s jigsaw stories like “The Sweet Hereafter,” but with fresh, well-defined characters and a story all his own.
In 1997 Atom Egoyan made his masterpiece “The Sweet Hereafter,” one of the best films of the decade.
There are two movies at war here: a glum, wintry character drama from the Atom Egoyan mold (say, The Sweet Hereafter or Exotica) and a very-particular-set-of-skills thriller a la Taken.
Put it in the same category as The War Zone and The Sweet Hereafter - movies about intimate tragedies whose impact wrenches both the heart and the mind.
Advertisement
As in Exotica, her character is something of a moral linchpin.
Egoyan, an Armenian Canadian, began his career making kinky avant-gardish doodles (The Adjuster, Speaking Parts) and then, in 1995, broke through with Exotica, a coldly arresting mosaic of murder, mourning, and forbidden desire.
Canadian writer and director Atom Egoyan (Exotica) has done an extraordinary job adapting Russell Banks's 1991 novel for the screen.
Though his six previous features (including "Exotica" and "The Adjustor") have made him one of Canada's most respected writer-directors, matching Egoyan's highly personal sensibility with this lucid, unadorned book was not an obvious choice.
If that was all there was to it, director Atom Egoyan ("Exotica") might have been credited with taking a cinematically handsome pot-shot at lawyers.
However, the director's next effort, the much-lauded Exotica, broke down the character/audience barrier, and, at the time, proved to be Egoyan's most challenging effort.
Do actors like Dennis Quaid, Jake Gyllenhaal, Sela Ward, and Ian Holm sit around in the morning, having little Starbucks coffee-klatsches in their morning robes or makeup-trailer casuals, assuring each other that The Day After Tomorrow has a high cheeseball factor, but hey, don't we need the money if we ever want a share of prestige-for-peanuts pictures like Far from Heaven or The Sweet Hereafter ?
A Good Person is Zach Braff’s syrupy rendition of films like Ordinary People and The Sweet Hereafter.
It's been a while since I've been this emotionally connected to a film and its characters, the last time being in 1997 with Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter."
Advertisement
When Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm, "The Sweet Hereafter") finds the One Ring he becomes oddly possessive of it, but when he leaves the Shire, his old friend Gandalf (Ian McKellen, "X-Men") persuades him to leave it for his beloved cousin Frodo (Elijah Wood, "The Ice Storm").