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A cold, dark hillside looms above the Bide-a-Wile Motel, pressing down on it, crushing out the life with the gray weight of winter. It is one of the strongest images in Atom Egoyan s “The Sweet Hereafter,” which takes place in a small Canadian town, locked in by snow and buried in grief after 14 children are killed in a school bus accident.
To this town comes a quiet man, a lawyer who wants to represent the residents in a class action suit. Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) lacks the energy to be an ambulance chaser; he is only going through the motions of his occupation. In a way he s lost a child, too; the first time we see him, he s on the phone with his drug-addicted daughter. “I don t know who I m talking to right now,” he tells her.