Lost in the Snow

A small community in a remote Canadian town is torn apart after fourteen children die in a school bus accident. Atom Egoyan's 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter is about as cheerless as you could imagine from the subject matter but, although it's really an ensemble film, the whole thing is elevated by a central performance by Ian Holm.

Holm plays a lawyer from the big city called Mitchel Stephens who comes to town to drum up support for a class-action lawsuit against . . . someone. For something. Bruce Greenwood plays the father of two of the kids who died. He was driving behind the bus at the time it slid off the icy road onto the frozen lake and could plainly see it was no-one's fault but bad luck. But someone has to be held responsible, right? Surely there was a screw loose in the bus or the railing was faulty. Once, when speaking with the parents of one victim, Stephens awkwardly uses the word "compensation". Even as he says it you can see in Holm's performance he's aware of how feeble the word is in this case. No-one seriously thinks "compensation" can come of this or of any effort in their power. But something must be done.

I saw an interview with Egoyan on Criterion before I watched the movie in which he said one thing that interested him in the story was the character of Nicole, one of the survivors, played by Sarah Polley. In the interview he explained that he was interested in how the entire community was aware that her father, Sam (Tom McCamus), sexually abused her but never spoke about it. In the film, for the most part, Egoyan allows the viewer to read between the lines, as Stephens has to, instead of directly explaining what's happening to her. I suppose the influence of Twin Peaks is pretty obvious and maybe, to a lesser extent, Fargo. It's almost unfortunate because until one thinks of those influences one doesn't really see the flaws in Sweet Hereafter. Both Twin Peaks and Fargo do a much better job of establishing a sense of community with idiosyncratic characters and layers of secrets and willful ignorance. One can almost hear Bobby Briggs saying, "We all knew she was in trouble."

Again, Ian Holm is amazing in the movie. His character is also dealing with his own family problem, a daughter who's grown up to be a drug addict. One moment, we watch him trying to appear compassionate while trying to convince people to join the lawsuit and in another moment wrestling with his love for his daughter and the knowledge that he can't trust anything she says. It's really a terrific performance.

The Sweet Hereafter is available on The Criterion Channel.