Movie Review: The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

A morose drama, The Sweet Hereafter explores a small town's grief after tragedy through the lens of a lawyer chasing a big case. The portrait of a tight knit community in crisis is stark, but also static.

Lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) arrives at a small town in rural Canada, where a recent school bus crash resulted in the death of many kids. The driver Dolores (Gabrielle Rose) lost control on a patch of ice, but Mitchell attempts to convince the grieving parents he will find a way to sue the town, the school board, or the bus manufacturer to secure a big money settlement.

As Mitchell visits the parents, the town's secrets are revealed. Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood), the local mechanic, is having an affair with motel owner Risa. He lost his two kids in the crash but resents the lawyer's presence. Teenager Nicole (Sarah Polley), an aspiring singer/songwriter and a victim of sexual abuse, was paralyzed but now finds her father's pursuit of money distasteful. College-educated parents Wanda and Hartley Otto lost their adopted son Bear and are quick to sign up with Mitchell.

Meanwhile, Mitchell himself is a suffering parent. His daughter Zoe (Caerthan Banks) is a drug addict running with the wrong crowd and only phoning him to extract money. On a plane trip Mitchell bumps into Zoe's school friend Allison (Stephanie Morgenstern) and vents his frustrations, while also recalling a harrowing incident from Zoe's childhood.

Written and directed by Atom Egoyan based on the Russell Banks book (inspired by a true 1989 bus tragedy in Texas), The Sweet Hereafter is a quiet journey into the heart of sadness. The snow-covered, isolated terrain contributes a blanket of sorrow, as an outsider pokes away at open wounds to inflame anger and earn himself a lawsuit. 

The revelations of internecine misbehaviour ensure a captivating viewing experience, as does the structure elegantly jumping between three timelines (before and after the crash, and Mitchell's plane trip). But the film stops short of evolving the town's residents into rounded characters, while overplaying a heavy-handed reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

The story is told through the eyes of a dour lawyer seeking a headline case, and although Ian Holm brings the necessary heartache to the role's personal tribulations, Mitchell is a glorified ambulance chaser and in some ways the least interesting character. At no point does he present a viable thesis to translate his talk into a coherent negligence case against a deep-pocketed defendant. The parallels between his sense of loss towards his daughter and the town's trauma is a worthwhile but limited narrative device. 

Elsewhere, Egoyan presents snapshots, then let's them sit like pictures on a mantelpiece. Nicole's victimization by her father and subsequent act of cerebral revenge, the Ottos' unbearable pain, bus driver Dolores' guilt, and Billy Ansel's affair with Risa and disgust at Mitchell, are all snippets of promising stories. They remain just that, Egoyan content with presenting but not expanding. The Sweet Hereafter sympathizes, then leaves its card behind and moves on.

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Movie Review: My Life Without Me (2003)

An end-of-life drama, My Life Without Me is a perceptive portrayal of a pragmatic mindset triggered by the final countdown.

In Vancouver, 23 year old Ann (Sarah Polley) works as an overnight janitor, is married to her high school sweetheart and swimming pool builder Don (Scott Speedman), and is the mother of two young daughters. Her family is poor but happy living in a cramped mobile home parked in her mother's backyard (mom is played by Deborah Harry, of Blondie fame). Ann receives a shocking diagnosis of terminal cancer: she has at most three months to live. She decides to not tell anyone, and makes a list of things to accomplish in her remaining time.

This includes speaking her mind at all times, having an affair, finding a replacement wife and mother for Don and the girls, and recording birthday messages for both daughters until they reach the age of 18. At the laundromat she meets lonely land surveyor Lee (Mark Ruffalo) and they start to fall in love, while she tests her co-worker Laurie (Amanda Plummer) and a new neighbour also called Ann (Leonor Watling) as potential replacements for herself.

When life's finish line appears surprisingly early and is suddenly within touching distance, what are the remaining priorities? My Life Without Me tackles this question with a steely, matter-of-fact determination but is nevertheless drenched in tears of emotion and loss. An adaptation of the book Pretending the Bed Is a Raft by Nanci Kincaid, the film is written and directed by Isabel Coixet, and unashamedly breaks most conventions.

This is not a typical story of heroic treatments, hospital visits, forgiveness, redemption and a family rallying around a tragedy. By keeping her imminent demise a secret, Ann steps outside her routine while everyone else carries on unperturbed, allowing two intertwined narratives to unfurl in tandem.

The working class family continues to deal with the mundane tasks of making ends meet, looking after the kids, and tolerating Ann's mom's idiosyncrasies. On her own Ann is simultaneously working through her bucket list, making sure she is expressing her love and thoughts, being a present wife, mother, and daughter, and stealing private moments to record greetings for birthdays she will never attend. She also audaciously plots to find a woman who can fill the void her death will create, and ponders the wisdom of visiting her imprisoned and estranged dad (an uncredited Alfred Molina).

And most of all, as a woman who settled down with her one and only man upon becoming pregnant at 17, she pines to experience another love, and her bittersweet potential romance with Lee is full of short-term promise. Ann's honest selfishness in seeking an affair to feel alive is a stark humanization of a compelling character, and Sarah Polley redefines independent and lonely courage in a poignant performance.

Coixet does overelaborate a few scenes featuring the young daughters Penny and Patsy, and is guilty of always looking for new sources of tears. But overall, My Life Without Me looks death in the eye, and crafts refreshingly new terms of engagement.

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Movie Review: Mr. Nobody (2009)

A thought-provoking drama exploring the nature of life itself, Mr. Nobody is visually stunning and full of ideas about human interactions, dependencies, and the far-reaching consequences of everyday decisions.

It's the year 2092, quasi-immortality is the norm, and 118 year-old Nemo Nobody (Jared Leto) is the last mortal on earth. With his health failing and memory fading, a doctor hypnotizes Nemo to help draw out his memories, and separately a young journalist conducts an interview.

Nemo's life stories are non-linear, scattered and often contradicting. He describes various outcomes as if they were separate lives lived, dependant on different crucial decisions he could have made. A critical juncture occurred at nine years old, when his parents separated and Nemo had to decide whether to join his departing mother (Natasha Little) or stay with his father (Rhys Ifans).

With his mother, Nemo falls in love with his soulmate Anna (Juno Temple at 15 and Diane Kruger as an adult), the daughter of his mother's new partner, although finding happiness will be difficult for the young lovers. With his father, Nemo is infatuated with the unstable Elise (Clare Stone at 15 and Sarah Polley as an adult). In one branch, their marriage is challenged by her mental state. In other iterations, an explosion wrecks their life together before it can start, or Nemo lets Elise get away and instead marries Jeanne (Linh Dan Pham), without much forethought.

In many instances throughout his possible lives, Nemo faces serious accidents and near-death experiences, including a motorcycle crash and a car-in-the-lake accident. Another thread features Nemo writing about a man traveling to Mars to spread the ashes of his lost love, an experience that Nemo also possibly lives through.

Written and directed by Jaco Van Dormael, Mr. Nobody is aesthetically stunning and mentally exhilarating. Tackling no less a topic than the meaning of life and the role of the individual in crafting its trajectory, Mr. Nobody uniquely articulates a brand of answers. Everything matters, every decision counts, every outcome is a gateway for more choices, and the destination is a lot less important than the road traveled.

Van Dormael's achievement resides in packaging thoughtful philosophy into a coherent narrative. The film never sits still and jumps around in space and time, Nemo's various versions and stages of life intermingling. But the film quickly gets into a rhythm, and it's relatively easy to follow the divergent trajectories. Mr. Nobody can be accused of almost stuffing too much into its 141 minutes (a longer 157 minute director's cut also exists), but the questions being asked are profound enough to justify the investment.

The film captures Nemo's key highlights, the moments in life which resonate eternally. The decision point between mom and dad at the train station is a stark fork in the tracks. Later, the first love between Nemo and Anna is soulful and poignant, and contrasted with the heat and turbulence of Nemo's relationship with Elise. The chapters with Jeanne offer a further contrast, but are relatively shortchanged in terms of screen time.

Jared Leto delivers one of his most impressive performances, finding resigned emotion even under a ton of makeup as a 118 year old man confined to bed. Tony Regbo and Juno Temple as the 15 year old versions of Nemo and Anna are also notable.

At every turn, Van Dormael crafts his film with loving attention to detail and an eye to dazzling visuals, imaginative transitions and expressive use of colour. Mr. Nobody is as rich as life, full of mysterious opportunity and possibility, waiting to be steered by ironically fleeting whims.

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Movie Review: Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

A remake of a sequel always runs the risk of being a dodgy proposition, but the 2004 version of Dawn Of The Dead just goes flat-out for fun. It's a supercharged zombie-killing fest, offering not much beyond the most rudimentary plot, but fuelled by endless hordes of the undead hunting for fresh flesh and getting re-killed for their troubles.

Ana (Sarah Polley), a nurse in Milwaukee, ends a long shift at the hospital, goes back home to her husband Luis, and wakes up when a neighbourhood child busts into their bedroom, attacks Luis, and kills him by tearing a strip off his neck. But Luis soon wakes up as a member of the growing undead army and attacks Ana, desperately trying to get his meal of fresh blood. She escapes, speeding away in her car and witnessing outright carnage throughout the city as the zombies run riot.

Ana eventually teams up with a small group of survivors: a police officer, a man with his pregnant wife, and a few stragglers. They take refuge in a shopping centre, and join forces with the mall security guards who have barricaded themselves. A long siege follows, interrupted by in-fighting and occasional skirmishes with intruding zombies. The survivors finally devise a plan to reinforce two mall shuttle buses and make a run for the harbour, where they can commandeer a yacht and sail to the presumed safety of an island.

Compared to George A. Romero's original sequel from 1978, the zombies of 2004's Dawn Of The Dead are fast, ugly, and mostly visible in quick cuts and micro-edits. Director Zack Snyder, a veteran of television commercials, draws energy from the briefest of split seconds, with zombies filling the screen only long enough to register as a mortal danger. It's a style of enhancing horror by providing just glimpses of abomination, and it works.

Snyder does not spare the blood and gore, with bodies hacked, blood sucked, victims bulldozed, zombies chain-sawed and the undead shot through the head with wild abandon. The excessive violence does eventually immunize against its own impact, and late in the movie some of the zombie killing does dangerously approach unintended comedy territory.

Elsewhere, Canadian Sarah Polley adds an unexpected dose of talent to the cast of survivors and victims, although after a bright start she melds into the group and gets relatively little to do. The Canadian connection continues with most of the filming taken place at an abandoned mall in suburban Toronto. And for zombie affectionados, there are many locational and character in-jokes referencing the 1978 version.

Dawn Of The Dead does not win any prizes for originality, but delivers the expected carnage with a bloody flourish.

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