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Ian Holm gives a career highlight performance in this Atom Egoyan adaptation of Russell Banks' novel. Holm plays a lawyer who travels to a snowy, rural town to incite a lawsuit after a bus crash robs the community of its children. Naturally, no one trusts Holm at first, but the more he digs, the more secrets are uncovered, and the more the community unravels.

As earnestly heart-breaking as The Sweet Hereafter is, it’s also one of the most gorgeously rendered motion pictures of the 1990s. Egoyan’s masterly staging and execution earned him a Best Director Oscar nomination. I especially love how he captures both the warmest and most chilling sensations from the film’s settings. Paul Sarossy’s cinematography and Michael Danna’s music are equally brilliant. Holm is surrounded by a spectacular supporting cast that includes Bruce Greenwood, Sarah Polley (who sings some beautiful songs in the film), and Maury Chaykin.

While the whole film is mesmerizing, the stand-out moment for me is when Holm recollects to an airplane passenger the time his baby daughter was bitten by a spider, forcing him to perform an emergency tracheotomy on her. Egoyan’s haunting flashback imagery combined with Holm’s performance are simply overwhelming. The Sweet Hereafter is a narrative, but I almost prefer to experience it as a tone poem. It’s melancholy sublimity just washes over me.