The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

“The Sweet Hereafter” does what fellow 1997 release “Titanic” could not, tell a story of mass death, an incident in the cold that leads to drowning of scores, and leave the viewer reeling. A blubbery mess. Here, Ian Holm plays Mitchell Stephens, an attorney who launches a lawsuit against the unknown “creators” of a highway-lake school bus incident that has killed nearly every child in an upper state New York burg. (There is no such thing as an accident, he says.) The lawyer sets out to find a “pure” family to lead his civil suit, but, of course, no such group exists. And Stephens has his own buried raging demons: His daughter is a drug-addicted waif with HIV. Written and directed by Atom Egoyan (“Exotica”), the film defines heartbreaking as it lays out the coldest of fact during a tragedy – sometimes there is no purpose, there is only pain. Holm should have won an Oscar for his role, a career defining act. Only one scene is wrong: A sickly twisted father-daughter incest tryst in a barn loft, filled with candles. Too much. A