The Sweet Hereafter

Fine Line Features | Release Date: November 21, 1997

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

91	METASCORE Universal acclaim based on 23 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Marjorie Baumgarten

I can think of no other movie that has dared to analyze grief and its aftermath with such naked honesty and precision. Read full review

100

James Berardinelli

This is truly a great film -- easily one of 1997's best. Read full review

100

Keith Phipps

It's all presented in a detached style that's ultimately much more moving and truthful than any heartstring-slashing weeper. This may be Egoyan's best work yet, and it's surely one of the best films of the year. Read full review

100

Film.comJohn Hartl

It's the survivors of this tragedy that must make peace with their fate, and the film finally rests with them.

100

Roger Ebert

This is one of the best films of the year, an unflinching lament for the human condition. Read full review

100

Edward Guthmann

Egoyan's voice is so clear and loving, his vision so forgiving and his film so intelligent that you come away refreshed. Read full review

100

Owen Gleiberman

Leaves you shaken and ecstatic at the same time, transported by the vision of a major film artist. Read full review

100

Stanley Kauffmann

Any film that provides Ian Holm with a large role is off to a good start. The Sweet Hereafter gets off to that start and keeps going. [Dec 8, 1997]

100

Michael Wilmington

Masterpiece is the right word for The Sweet Hereafter. It is extraordinary: a poem of familial pain, a song of broken embraces. [25 December 1997, Tempo, p.1]

100

David Sterritt

This poetic and compassionate drama by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan combines the intricate structure of his earlier movies with an emotional power that raises his remarkable career to a whole new level. Read full review

Stephanie Zacharek

The movie has a crispness about it, an unwillingness to succumb to sentimentality. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

Egoyan understands how potent a deliberate pace can be, how effective it is in making already powerful material strong enough to tear at your heart. Read full review

Richard Schickel

A solemn, subtly structured, beautifully acted and ultimately hypnotic movie. Read full review

Mike Clark

A little movie almost perfectly realized. Read full review

Stephen Hunter

The chronological looseness is part of the pleasure of the piece, which magically reassembles in the last reel into something strong, lucid and compellingly powerful. Read full review

Janet Maslin

The filmmaker creates schematic, intuitive images that hauntingly crystallize the characters' situations. Read full review

Jonathan Rosenbaum

The power and reach of this undertaking are formidable. Read full review

Film.comPeter Brunette

Egoyan's films have always been about the intricacies and basic strangeness of human relationships, rather than about plot or snappy one-liners, but a new moral urgency seems to invigorate this film.

Brendan Kelly

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. Read full review

Andrea C. Basora

A moving, complex and dreamlike tale. Read full review

New Times (L.A.)Andy Klein

For all its mystery and its stylistic finesse, there is something vaguely plodding about The Sweet Hereafter. Read full review

Sarah Kerr

Throughout the film Egoyan's affectlessness has been whispering to us that life is a puzzle without a solution. The price for this lesson is that his characters seem like mere pieces in that puzzle. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh

Piercing, sweetly melancholy and acted with a breathtaking eye for nuance. Read full review