The sweet afterlife

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Movie
German title The sweet afterlife
Original title The Sweet Hereafter
Country of production Canada
original language English
Publishing year 1997
length approx. 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Atom Egoyan
script Atom Egoyan
production Atom Egoyan
Camelia Frieberg
music Mychael Danna
Jane Siberry
camera Paul Sarossy
cut Susan Shipton
occupation
synchronization

The Sweet Hereafter ( The Sweet Hereafter ) is a dual Oscar -nominiertes film drama by Canadian director Atom Egoyan from the year 1997 . It is based on the Russell Banks novel of the same name . The drama varies the basic motif of the legend of the Pied Piper of Hameln .

action

One day in the Canadian community of Sam Dent, the school bus comes off the road near black ice, drives onto a frozen lake, collapses and sinks. The widowed family man Billy Ansel, who had made it a habit to drive behind the bus for a while every day while waving to his own children in the back seat of the bus, becomes a helpless witness to this tragedy. The majority of the children die and the small community is in shock.

The bereaved bereaved in mourning receive a visit from an energetic and ostensibly sensitive attorney: Mitchell Stephens has made it his mission to "give direction" to their pain and anger. He wants to represent them and protect them “from a battery of lawyers” on the other side who are only out to reduce the pain and suffering payments to their parents. Reluctantly only some of the bitter parents and the bus driver Dolores respond to the lawyer's persistent attempts to convince him. Stephens cannot give an answer as to which person or which company is specifically to blame for the accident, but he is convinced that somebody should definitely be responsible. Through phone calls between the lawyer and his daughter Zoe, it quickly becomes clear that he himself has long since lost touch with his drug addict daughter and is struggling with his own anger and impotence. While on a plane trip, he tells Allison, a former classmate of his daughter's, about his grueling and seemingly futile struggle to win his daughter back.

The few surviving witnesses must testify correctly for the case to stand a chance in court. Nicole Burnell, who has been in a wheelchair since the accident and was one of the oldest students on the bus and sat in the front row, played a key role. Billy Ansel, who as an observer of the accident would be an important witness, does not want to deepen his pain and grief in a lengthy court hearing and therefore boycotts Stephen's work. He prefers to cope with the grief together in the village and to help each other as before. Ansel goes to Nicole's parents and asks them to withdraw the lawsuit. Nicole's father, who has an incestuous relationship with his daughter, refuses, with reference to the money needed for Nicole's treatment. Nicole overhears her parents' conversation with Ansel.

When she was questioned, Nicole claims that the bus driver Dolores drove far too fast, which everyone involved immediately recognizes as a false statement. With their credibility destroyed and Dolores having little money anyway, a successful lawsuit has become impossible. Nicole apparently wanted to take revenge on her father's abuse in this way. Stephens leaves the village, two years later he sees Dolores working as a bus driver in a big city.

background

The film was based on the 1991 novel Das süße Jenseits (The Sweet Hereafter) by the American writer Russell Banks , who also briefly played the supporting role of Dr. Robeson can be seen. Banks came up with the novel in a 1989 bus accident in Alton, Texas , in which 21 school children died and many more were injured when the bus fell more than ten meters into a water pit. Unlike in Banks' novel and the film, the accident was caused specifically by the collision with a truck that belonged to the Coca-Cola company . Many lawyers who wanted to sue Coca-Cola showed up at the funerals and memorial events. By 2009, Coca-Cola had to pay around $ 144 million in damages, of which around $ 50 million went to lawyers. Many of the families had previously been poor and overwhelmed by the sudden money combined with the grief.

The film has wonderful landscape shots (partly with a helicopter) of snow-capped mountains, long, quiet shots and a gentle, poetic-musical background. Nicole's narrative voice runs through the film like a red thread with the legend of the Pied Piper of Hameln. The camera takes close ups of Kate Greenaway's illustrations in an old picture book, while Nicole reads this to Billy Ansel's children as a bedtime story.

Another level of meaning of the film deals with the unspoken question of how a functioning and harmonious coexistence is possible and how quickly it can collapse. This becomes clear, among other things, in the contrast to the local “ hippie ” parents, the Otto's, who looked after their son particularly lovingly. Here, hippies do not take on an outsider role in a community, because they are respected by their neighbors, even if they are not churchgoers. The film title alludes to the wonderful things the children of Hamelin were allowed to see in the mountain.

The song Courage of The Tragically Hip is both of these as well as the actress Sarah Polley sung.

The film was shot in the towns of Merritt and Spences Bridge in British Columbia , in Stouffville, Ontario and Toronto .

synchronization

role actor German Dubbing voice
Mitchell Stevens Ian Holm Mogens von Gadow
Nicole Burnell Sarah Polley Stefanie von Lerchenfeld
Billy Ansel Bruce Greenwood Oliver Stritzel
Sam Burnell Tom McCamus Walter von Hauff
Mary Burnell Brooke Johnson Christina Hoeltel
Wanda Otto Arsinee Khanjian Dagmar Heller
Zoe Stephens Caerthan Banks Sandra Schwittau
Allison, airline passenger Stephanie Morgenstern Claudia Lössl
stewardess Kirsten Kieferle Angelika Bender

Reviews

The sweet afterlife received excellent reviews. James Berardinelli wrote: "Film couldn't be more powerful: A drama that shakes the soul, and yet completely free of any trace of manipulation, sentimentality or sweetness." 

In Germany too, the votes for the film were positive. Cinema magazine described the film as a "painful drama, bitter as well as healing" and a "masterpiece" . The Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon writes that it is “a moving film about loss and grief and the responsibility that we all bear for the fate of our children.” The film service judges: “An intense, haunting film about loss and suffering that is written as a textbook in Matters of vital mourning can be understood. Despite the moving subject, the very artificial design also keeps the viewer at a certain distance and enables them to deal with existential questions of meaning largely without emotion. (Cinema tip from the Catholic film review) “ Andreas Kilb was also in a positive mood in Die Zeit . The film connects “the dreams and the tragedies of life” and is not confusing despite its “many flashbacks and flashbacks, its wild alternation between the past, present and future of the narrative”. "The film is very clear because it gives itself completely to its characters."

In 2003, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in cooperation with numerous filmmakers, created a film canon for work in schools and included this film in their list.

Awards

The sweet beyond received the following awards:

DVD release

  • The sweet afterlife . Kinowelt Home Entertainment 2007

literature

  • Russell Banks : The Sweet Beyond. The novel based on the award-winning film by Atom Egoyan. (Original title: The Sweet Hereafter ). German by Kerstin Gleba . Goldmann, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-442-44083-1 , 287 pp.
  • Russell Banks: The Sweet Hereafter . HarperCollins, New York 1991, ISBN 0-06-016703-3
  • Eberhard Ostermann: 'The Sweet Hereafter' or life after the trauma . In: EO: The Movie Count. Eight exemplary analyzes . Fink, Munich 2007, pp. 79-94, ISBN 978-3-7705-4562-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrew Pulver: Grim fairytale . In: The Guardian . May 13, 2005, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed June 30, 2020]).
  2. ↑ Naxiely Lopez-Puente: Season of Sadness: For Alton bus crash survivors and first responders, the scars run deep 30 years. In: The Monitor. September 22, 2019, accessed June 30, 2020 (American English).
  3. ↑ Lynn Brezosky, San Antonio Express-News: After 20 years, scars from Valley bus tragedy remain. September 20, 2009, accessed June 30, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Naxiely Lopez-Puente: Season of Sadness: For Alton bus crash survivors and first responders, the scars run deep 30 years. In: The Monitor. September 22, 2019, accessed June 30, 2020 (American English).
  5. ↑ a b IMDb
  6. ↑ German synchronous index | Movies | The sweet afterlife. Retrieved July 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ James Berardinelli
  8. ↑ Cinema magazine
  9. ↑ Dirk Jasper FilmLexikon ( Memento from July 13, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ The sweet afterlife. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  11. ^ Andreas Kilb : Family Pictures . In: Die Zeit , No. 11/1998, p. 43