The Sweet Hereafter

There's something very lucid and just faintly mournful about The Sweet Hereafter; were it not so plainly spoken, it would seem like an elegy, though I couldn't say to what. So many of its happenings would so easily be susceptible of a sensationalistic treatment - the domestic abuse, the lifestyle and diagnosis of Stevens' daughter, the interview in which Nicole tells her lie, the central accident itself - but everything is handled with a restraint and a quiet which is, cumulatively, rather devastating. There's some lovely stuff on the soundtrack, too - some Jane Siberry, and at least one song on which Sarah Polley herself sings. (The last, and only previous, time I saw this was some time in late high school - almost a decade ago now - but I recall it as having had much the same effect on me then.)