Sweet Hereafter bittersweet

Egoyan's most recent offering is a painful and very affecting experience

Watching The Sweet Hereafter is like viewing a tragedy in slow motion; it is agonizing in detail, painful to watch and hypnotically compelling. Atom Egoyan's 1997 adaptation of the novel by Russell Banks centers around the loss of a town's schoolchildren in a bus accident. The event arouses the interests of a lawyer, Mitchell Stevens (played by Ian Holm), who comes to the town in order to represent the bereaved and obtain compensation for the victims' parents. This story serves as the frame for meditations on the lingering nature of memory, the fragility of family unity and the hidden power dynamics which unsettle our relationships between loved ones.

The film's narrative unfolds in a broken, non-chronological weave. Happy scenes of family life before the accident are juxtaposed with the parents' attempts to pick up the pieces after the death of their children. The distorted time line contrasts the powerful grief directly after the accident to the lingering sadness a few years later. The characters express a deep rage beneath their sorrow at being cheated out of a content and happy family life by senseless tragedy. This rage does not fade over time.

The children, the town's future generation, leave the parents with nothing to live for, haunted by memories of a family life that can no longer be. The lawsuit begins as a way of focusing their anger. Stevens claims to be a voice of moral responsibility, unsure of whom he will sue, yet knowing that someone must be made to blame. Focusing blame becomes a way in which the parents can find meaning to the senseless accident. This meaning is a myth fed by the lawyer-nothing can soothe the pain of losing a child. By the end of the lawsuit, the parents are more interested in the promise of money than in psychological peace.

The lawyer, his own home life destroyed by divorce and a drug addicted daughter, also searches for a way to reconcile himself with his past. He feels at once a love for the daughter which he knew, and a hatred for his daughter now turned junkie. This precarious balance of emotion underlies all of the family relationships in The Sweet Hereafter. Family love creates both happiness and unsettlement. Love fosters a dependence which people desire and fear. When parents look to their children to find meaning in their life, their happiness becomes vulnerable to random accidents and tragedy.

The Sweet Hereafter, which starts slow, draws the viewer into a complex and philosophical character study of many dimensions. The story of the film is only a vehicle by which Egoyan composes a beautiful poem about the haunting emptiness of death. Egoyan cleverly contrasts lights and darks, long shots and close ups, past and present, using editing to layer the narrative together. Though it takes a while to get into, the effect becomes profoundly moving.

This isn't a film you walk out of without being emotionally affected. The Sweet Hereafter addresses the numerous emotions surrounding death and memory without supplying the audience with an idealistic ending. The memory of lost loved ones is a pain which never heals, yet that sadness can bring a person to a more intense awareness of life's happy moments, as fleeting as they may be.

The Sweet Hereafter is playing today. Kettering 11, 7:15 p.m., 9:30 p.m., & 11.45 p.m. $1.