There is nothing, absolutely nothing, someone can’t figure out a way to make a buck on. Tragedy being the least of them at times. But someone should pay, right? There has to be a culprit. But how do we sort out our obligations when it is something this entangled?
Was it all just a patch of ice being in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if no one is to blame? Or was it more sinister. Or cynical.
Sometimes Mitchell seems to be the hero here, sometimes Billy seems to be. And by the time it gets down to us the experience may become reduced to…entertainment?
THE SWEET HEREAFTER
Written and directed by Atom Egoyan
[b]Mason: Nicole, did the Pied Piper take the children away because he was mad that the town didn’t pay him?
Nicole: That’s right.
Mason: Well, if he knew magic, if he could get the kids into the mountain, why couldn’t he use his magic pipe to make the people pay him for getting rid of the rats?
Nicole: Because… he wanted them to be punished.
Mason: So he was mean?
Nicole: No, not mean, just… very angry.
…
Zoe: (over the phone) So what’s the problem?
Mitchell: The problem is I have no idea who I’m talking to right now.
…
Mitchell: Tell me about the Ottos.
Risa: Wanda and Hartley. They lost Bear. He was their adopted son. A beautiful boy. Indian. Mitchell: Indian?
Risa: Yes.
Mitchell: That’s good. Judges like adopted Indian boys.
…
Mitchell: It should be said that my task is to represent the Walkers only in their anger. Not their grief.
Wanda: Who did they get for that?
Mitchell: You are angry, aren’t you, Mrs. Otto? That’s why I’m here. To give your anger a voice. To be your weapon against whoever caused that bus to go off the road.
…
Mitchell: Mrs. Otto, there is no such thing as an accident. The word doesn’t mean anything to me. As far as I’m concerned, somebody somewhere made a decision to cut a corner. Some corrupt agency or corporation accounted the cost variance between a ten-cent bolt and a million dollar out-of-court settlement. They decided to sacrifice a few lives for the difference. That’s what’s done, Mrs. Otto. I’ve seen it happen so many times before.
…
Mitchell: Listen to me, Mrs Otto. Listen very carefully. I do know what’s best. As we’re sitting here the town or the school board or the manufacturer of that bus are lining up a battery of their own lawyers to negotiate with people as grief-stricken as yourselves. And this makes me very, very mad. It’s why I came all the way up here. If everyone had done their job with integrity your son would be alive this morning and safely in school. I promise you that I will pursue and reveal who it was that did not do their job.
…
Mitchell: …I’ve sent her to the best hospitals, she’s seen all the best doctors. It doesn’t matter. Two weeks later she’s on the street. New York, Vancouver, Pittsburgh, Toronto, L.A. The next time I hear from her, it’s a phone call scamming for money. Money for school, or money for a new kind of therapist, or money for a plane ticket home. ‘Oh Daddy, just let me come home…Please, Daddy, I have to see you…’ But she never comes home. I’m always at the airport, but she’s never there. Ten years of this, ten years of these lies, of imagining what happens if I don’t send the money, of kicking down doors and dragging her out of rat-infested apartments, of explaining why that couldn’t be my daughter in a porn flick someone saw…well, enough rage and helplessness, and your love turns to something else.
Alison: (softly): What…does it turn to?
Mitchell: It turns to steaming piss.
…
Risa: Is it true that you gave Nicole one of Lydia’s dresses? That she was wearing it when the bus crashed?
Billy: Yes.
Risa: Why did you do that, Billy?
Billy: You think that caused the accident, Risa? That it brought bad luck? Christ, it sounds to me you’re looking for a witch doctor, not a lawyer. Or maybe they’re the same thing.
…
Billy: There’s lawyers suing lawyers because some people were stupid enough to sign on with more thasn one if the bastards. There’s people pointing fingers and making side deals…dickering over percentages.
…
Mitchell: I can help you.
Billy: Not unless you can raise the dead.
…
Billy: Mitchell Stephens, Esquire. Tell me, would you be likely to sue me if I was to beat you right now? I mean, beat you so bad you piss blood and couldn’t walk for a month. Because that’s what I’m about to do.
Mitchell: No, Mr. Ansel. I wouldn’t sue you.
Billy: You leave us alone, Stephens. You leave the people of this town alone.
…
Mitchell: That’s my daughter. Or it may be the police to tell me that they’ve found her dead. She’s a drug addict.
Billy: Why are you telling me this?
Mitchell: I’m telling you this because… we’ve all lost our children, Mr. Ansel. They’re dead to us. They kill each other in the streets. They wander comatose in shopping malls. They’re paralyzed in front of televisions. Something terrible has happened that’s taken our children away. It’s too late. They’re gone.
…
Sam: Nicole, tomorrow Mr. Stephens wants you to make your deposition at the community center. Thought I’d take you over.
Nicole: Great.
Sam: You seem, uh, I don’t know. Distant, I guess. Hard to talk to.
Nicole: We didn’t used to have to talk a lot, did we Daddy?
…
Mitchell: She loved us both equally then…just as she hates us both equally now.
…
Mitchell: You’d make a good poker player, kid
…
Sam: I don’t know what she was doing in there. She was lying.
Mitchell: It doesn’t matter whether she was lying or not. The lawsuit is dead. Everyone’s lawsuit is dead. Forget it. Tell the others to forget it. It is over. Right now, the thing you got to worry about is why she lied. Now, any kid who would do that to her father is not normal.[/b]
Did Nicole lie? And, if so, why? If a lie, was it the right thing or the wrong thing to do?
Nicole: I wonder if you realize that all of us - Dolores, me, the children who survived, the children who didn’t - that we’re all citizens of a different town now. A town with different rules and different laws. A town of people living in the sweet hereafter.
The hereafter, yes. Sweet? I still don’t get that part.