The Sweet Hereafter

There's a mesmerizing clarity to The Sweet Hereafter': you're moved by it, but you never feel the filmmaker is milking your emotions.

That's the true power of Egoyan's film - how in shuffling the chronological deck, we see what once was in this town, both in its light and its darkness, and how none of it will ever be the same, no matter what Mitchell Stevens says.

A delicate and touching story.

...Egoyan looks at the essence of guilt and the complexity of human relationships in all their rich variety.

Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan's most ambitious work to date, The Sweet Hereafter is a rich, complex meditation on the impact of a terrible tragedy on a small town.

Rightly considered one of Canada’s most important films, writer-director Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, now issued in restored form, stands the test of time.

[Recreates] the terrible iciness of grief in a way that is difficult to shake off.

The film works very well on its own merits combining stunning cinematography, brilliant performances and a stirring screenplay.

Atom Egoyan doesn't handle nuance well, coating the film in a blanket of indistinct subtlety. Properly dissected, one can see the sublime film that could've been.