Mr. Egoyan knows how to use the camera to capture or create and a lingering sense of grief. In essence, this entire film is about sadness and its everlasting nature. How human being are always more than they appear and also less.
A school bus crash kills most children in a small town. A lawyer, Mitchell, (Ian Holm) comes to town to file a negligence lawsuit against the bus company. Mr. Mitchell has his own sadness, guilt and helplessness to deal with. In a sense he wants this lawsuit to be his atonement. However, the townsfolk see him as something else – an ambulance chaser, someone who wants their grief to linger. In reality, grief has its own way of lingering and it needs no help – is where Mr. Egoyan wants to take us.
A school bus crash kills most children in a small town. A lawyer, Mitchell, (Ian Holm) comes to town to file a negligence lawsuit against the bus company. Mr. Mitchell has his own sadness, guilt and helplessness to deal with. In a sense he wants this lawsuit to be his atonement. However, the townsfolk see him as something else – an ambulance chaser, someone who wants their grief to linger. In reality, grief has its own way of lingering and it needs no help – is where Mr. Egoyan wants to take us.