This is a small independent film made by up-and-coming fimmaker, Atom Egoyan.  It is about what happens to a town after a terrible school bus accident claims the lives of 14 of its children.  The Sweet Hereafter is a powerful film.  Based on the novel by Russell Banks, it tells the story mainly from the perspective of Mitchell Stevens (Ian Holm), the lawyer.  He comes to the small Canadian town in an attempt to garner plaintiffs to sue any entity that has pockets deep enough to squelch their rage or end their fiancial struggles or help both them and him find some meaning in one of life's inexplicable and blameless tragedies.  Stevens, the lawyer, may be a crass opportunist not above using his own tragedy (his daughter, Zoe who has succumbed to drug addiction)to manipulate the town's grief stricken parents or a father trying to make sense of his own loss or both.

    The acting by the entire cast of The Sweet Hereafter is absolutely superb.  Gabrielle Rose plays Nicole, a beautiful and highly perceptive teenager with a devastating secret who survives the accident, but is left a paraplegic.  This young actress puts in an incredibly sdtrong performance as a girl who is both freed and enslaved by the schoolbus' soujourn into the icy lake.   The actress who plays Delores, the bus driver gives a magnificently understated performance that makes her pain so palpable to the audience that it truly captures the bizarrly ordinary way in which human beings often react to tragedy.   The film goes back and forth in time which may, at first, confuse the viewer, especially if you haven't read the novel.  As a nice counterbalance to However, one creative device Egoyan uses is the story of the Pied Piper.  The story of the Pied Piper greatly illuminates the Sweet Hereafeter's complex themes.  Nicole reads this Robert Browning classic to two children (who perished in the accident) she used to babysit.  Nicole herself represents the lame child who walked to slow to follow the others into the magic mountainside portal and consequently remained behind in the town.  That lame child's as well as Nicole's desire to join her playmates is incredibly bittersweet.  More important, in the Browning's story, the town is left to wonder why the Piper took their children.  The pain that those townspeople felt at not knowing why their children were taken away is identical to the misery felt by the townspeople in the movie.  Further, the human desire to punish someone is akin to the Piper's motivation in spiritng away the town's children.

    Please, go out of your way to see this film.  It is well-worth it.  The Sweet Hereafter is not playing at a lot of the more mainstream cinemas.  However, in D.C, you can currently catch it at the Cineplex Odeon Inner Circle at 23rd and M Streets.