Drama. It was filmed in Canada, which I didn’t know, despite the abundance of snow on some plans. I thought it was an abandoned town in the Midwest. Small, but with so many life situations, which according to statistics would be enough for the country. Watch and celebrate, oh, and it's here. Ba, and this. And then the quantity goes into quality, and you're no longer surprised how many aspects of the inner life of families are shown. Well, this is how it develops peacefully, not without intrigue, of course. Beautiful in the frame, thanks to shooting in the open spaces (which we, residents of large cities, usually lack). And then — bang, a sharp turn in the middle of the film, and further look becomes more difficult, because the cause of the drama is shown, and it is necessary to somehow live on ... and the main characters and the viewer.
It is worth watching in order to feel more compassion and love.
Glorious Future is a 1997 drama directed by Canadian director Atom Egoyan, an ethnic Armenian based on a book by American writer Russell Banks. The film collected a heap of prestigious awards and nominations, including seven awards “Gini”, the highest national Canadian annual film festival, and two Oscar nominations for best director and best adapted screenplay. But this slow, but very tragic film did not gain much distribution. This is largely due to the fact that the film does not have a solid cast, the only one who can be distinguished from it is the English actor Ian Holm (famous for his role as Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings), who played the mutually unifying character of the picture “Glorious Future” by lawyer Mitchell Stevens, who arrived in a small Canadian town, who is experiencing the consequences of common grief.
This grief happened to a school bus that fell off a cliff due to a slippery track after raining. The only survivors were two bus driver Dolores Discoult (Gabrielle Rose) and schoolgirl Nicole Barnell (Sarah Polly), who remained confined to a wheelchair after the crash. Mitchell Stevens himself has his own grief - his beloved daughter became a drug addict and on the eve of Mitchell's arrival in the town reported that HIV tests were positive. Enraged at the whole world, Mr. Stevens wants to convince the residents of the town to sue, believing that the bus driver was not to blame for the accident and the subsequent deaths of children, the fault lies with those who either put down bad asphalt, or the fence posts were poorly installed or the bus manufacturers introduced poor-quality brakes and wheels. Some of the residents agree with the arguments of the lawyer and sign the petition, but gradually the case takes a completely different turn and there are those who want to bury the mystery of the tragedy forever.
The viewer, unfamiliar with the manner of production of Atom Egoyan, can immediately note the slow pace of the film. It seems that the film does not have the drive and dynamism that sustains the interest in acting throughout the film. But another viewer will note that Atom Egoyan deliberately delays the picture so that each character of Glorious Future can be accepted and felt. In this case, the actors need to reveal the characters of their characters, which, in principle, they do, and in addition, in their monologues you can restore the entire picture of events, which broke into small pieces like a mosaic dropped on the floor. When you already understand what the film is inexorably moving towards, you can feel those involved in the case who do not want to be bothered again in the past, they want to forget it. The truth that will be revealed during the actions taken by Mitchell Stevens, will be so shocking that even want to swear at the lawyer for what he went out of his own business.
Ian Holm wears a mask of tragedy throughout the film. Some of the residents of the town, where he will visit, will think that he specially theatricalizes his emotions, wanting to show that he really regrets and grieves for what happened. But we know that these are not fake emotions, Mitchell Stevens is looking for forgetfulness in this case, wants to distance himself from his own problems, covering his grief with the grief of other people. Once again, the magnificent English actor Ian Holm shows the depth of the dramatic image, for which he is honored. You can’t forget about Sarah Polly’s character. I am sincerely sorry for the girl who lost her family members in an accident, it is a pity that she became disabled, but she read the children a fairy tale about Pied Piper (this insert is a find from Atom Egoyan), loved them... But as you get closer to the finale, you suddenly realize that the pity you've felt before is nothing compared to the shock you're going to get. Other actors played ordinary people well, but against the background of Ian Holm and Sarah Polly, they are not so expressive.
"Glorious Future" is a sad and piercing movie, about which you do not need to form an opinion at first glance, because at first it will seem somewhat sullen and slow. But a gradual, methodical disclosure of the characters, laying out pieces of the puzzle, which in the finale finally comes together and reveals a completely shocking truth. And the film makes you wonder whether Mitchell Stevens did the right thing to get to her, or whether it was not worth stirring up a past that many in a remote snowy town bring only unbearable pain? Decide for yourself whether to watch "Glorious Future" or not, and I sum up the assessment:
7 out of 10
The film “Glorious Future” can be called the most real pearl of Canadian cinema. An unusually cold, but at the same time charming drama that risks being misunderstood for the unprepared viewer by its versatility of perception.
The film tells the monstrous story of a school bus crash, when on a snowy highway the driver failed to control; as a result, most of the children who were inside died. The main role here is assigned to a lawyer who is hired by one of the affected families in order to obtain financial compensation. The film seamlessly transports the viewer from the present to the future and the past, telling the classic story of Small Town. Big Secrets”. The story is teetering between several families who have somehow changed since the tragedy. The director correctly chooses priorities, without putting everything in a pile; absolutely knowing exactly what and how he wants to say. As a result, the film looks whole, without sagging, which is very characteristic of the genre.
Despite the whole galaxy of talented Canadian actors, the whole film is based on the magnificent Ian Holm – the same guest lawyer who has his own interest in this case, trying to change the mistakes of the past.
The film, which received high reviews from the Western press, remains completely unnoticed by the Russian audience. Although the saturation (not event, but emotional) film will give odds to many. So unless you're afraid of too much gloom, "Glorious Future" is your movie for the evening.
It is difficult, perhaps, to look like a white crow, when here, on Kinopoisk, and on other venues, only enthusiastic Filipinos are devoted to the film “Glorious Future”. However, I will decide on this and say banal, like the tape of Egoyan itself, the picture is boring, shallow and incredibly technical. Everything in the film: the “suffering” of parents who lost their children (for comparison, remember Sean Penn’s “Promise”), and the “ragged” style of presentation (why is he in this case? After all, neither decorated nor enriched the narrative), and the line of incest (so veiled that, being the main one in the book, is secondary here and pops out like hell from the snuffbox at the end of the film, confusing the cards and making some exclaim: “Oh, what is it?” – in a word, everything is so superficial that neither the sound, nor the views, nor the actors’ periodically good play save the situation.
Of the “positive” moments, I note the excellent performance of Ian Holm, who was remembered wonderfully after “From Hell”. The actor perfectly succeeded in his role - the role of a father, endlessly tired of life, life, poisoned by a drug addict daughter. Memories of her daughter, a piercing story about an incident from her childhood - perhaps the only thing that really took the soul, made you empathize with the hero, understand his tragedy.
Extremely good and the leitmotif of the film, originally accompanied by lines from "Hameln Ratcatcher". This and the play of Ian Holm - the only reason why watching the film was justified.
I thought it would be more dramatic to have a full-fledged story of Holm’s character, where we could trace the evolution of the father-daughter relationship with drugs from endless love to complete misunderstanding and hatred. Egoyan, with his original style and extraordinary approach, I’m sure it would be great. And as for "Glorious Future", then for the game of Hill and for the rat-catcher I put him.
5 out of 10
There is a limit to everything. You can't sleep with your daughter. You can’t get compensation for the dead children and you can’t do your own small business on your parents’ grief.
How disgusting a father looks, trying to fuck his daughter with everything that can be extracted at the moment: to share with her the glory of a talented performer, to disrupt her virginity, well, if there is nothing else to take, then at least monetary compensation for disability.
How pathetic a lawyer looks amid the formidable grandeur of death. When did it break? Probably when he was taking his little daughter to the hospital, watching her breathing and holding a knife ready to do a tracheotomy if breathing stops by stabbing her baby in the throat. It's actually incredibly scary. And he failed the test, lost his honor. Now he is a pathetic fussing man, diligently playing his part. He skillfully pulls the strings, getting the right reaction from the parents of the dead children. Only with those who have looked into the eyes of death, this number does not pass. They're the only ones tearing his mask off. They looked over the edge, and behind their shoulders the greatness of death, which does not tolerate vanity.
A man whose beloved wife died of cancer and who then witnessed the death of his children. The other man who suffered the blow is the driver's husband, who was driving the bus and turned out to be one of the survivors. And the girl who survived the accident. The change that has occurred in her is the most striking. Not long ago, before the disaster, she gave up on her father, who promised her the most beautiful scene she could sing. And today, having given false testimony, he decisively undermines his father's hopes of receiving compensation for the accident. Death, true grief, any genuine feeling, in general, excludes the discussion of money. How pathetic and cynical it sounds: it will not be returned, so at least we will cover the costs of funerals, treatment, etc., etc. – all with which people justify their pettiness and greed.
Yes, perhaps time will heal the wounds, and the driver, who was in the accident, will again start to drive people. But now the afterlife is so close and so sweet. Behind Pied Piper and happy children just closed the door to the beautiful otherworldly, and the lame boy, who did not keep up with the rest, the earthly world still seems too gray and too small.
8 out of 10
In a small Canadian town, a great misfortune occurs: a school bus takes out of the road to a lake, where it falls under the ice, after which most children die. A rather successful lawyer Mitchell (Holm) arrives in the city, who is able to obtain compensation from one of the large companies, whether they are bus manufacturers, road authorities or those responsible for the fence. To do this, Mitchell needs to enlist the support of the families of the dead children, as well as survivors of the disaster, including bus driver Dolores (Rose) and teenage girl Nicole (Polly), who became disabled.
Very multifaceted and multi-layered film. This is his strength and this is his weakness. In my opinion, there is no single core in it, a common thought around which events would revolve. On the other hand, any of the social problems proposed by the director causes great audience interest and receives a worthy development in the film. There are thoughts about the attractiveness of the afterlife, saying that the survivors are much worse than the dead. There is a very interesting dilemma: it is ethical or not to get compensation from the authorities for the dead children, because nothing can change and the money will not be returned. It also touches on some important theological questions about a god who is “not bad, but just very angry.” Plus, Mitchell also has a daughter – a drug addict, who has AIDS, who is soon doomed to death. And this, of course, also affects his behavior in this situation. And finally, not the last place is occupied by the arguments on Stephen King’s favorite theme: “Everything that happens in a small city stays in a small city.” All this is mixed in a single tape, which, for all its versatility, is rather leisurely and even boring in places.
The picture “Glorious Future” cannot be called “actors”. Yes, perhaps none of the performers frankly failed, but you will not see any enchanting acting here either. The best images were Ian Holm, who played the main character, and Sarah Polly, who portrayed a disabled girl with a very unusual for such an age psyche and ability to make important decisions. By and large, it is she who is the factor X, the intrigue on which the viewer’s interest in the development of the plot rests.
Thus, “Glorious Future” is certainly not a movie for everyone. In the conventional, mass framework, there are too few events that meet the author’s style of independent cinema replaced by dialogues and monologues (or even voiceover text) of key characters. On the other hand, the topics raised in this tape are very interesting and multifaceted. Perhaps somewhere the director and failed to collect all the threads in one tangle, or perhaps that’s just me. In any case, the film is recommended.
In a small town in northern Canada, a terrible tragedy happened - a school bus full of children flew into a frozen lake. All but the bus driver and high school student Nicole, who survived, paralyzed below the waist, died in the icy water. After hearing about this, lawyer Mitchell Stevens (Ian Holm) comes to the village to convince the families of the dead children to file a class action lawsuit against the company that released defective vehicles from the assembly line. However, Mitch is not seeking justice so much as justice. Stevens' lawyer is a father whose daughter pulls drug money out of him in every way she can. Unable to do anything about her, he sees the grief of other parents as an opportunity to justify himself. And some in the community will quickly notice how much Mitchell is obsessed with wanting to obscure his powerlessness by doing something that doesn't affect his own life.
Extremely thought-out drama, with a light detective, or even more mystical, shade. A film that will require the viewer’s full attention if he does not want to sit with his mouth open during the final credits, frantically trying to understand where he lost the thread of events. The script came out so deep that closer to the middle of the session I had a desire to get a notebook, because it seemed to me the only way to really appreciate the most interesting story. There is a female driver, Dolores, who has been driving the same school bus for 18 years, who can’t believe she let her neighbors down, and the Nicole family, which has so many devils that their longing for monetary compensation is just flowers, and a lawyer who tries to block his own heart with someone else’s grief, cursing the whole world for his weakness and fate, from which he could not save his child. However, no matter how confusing the plot, the idea of the picture is clearly traced – sometimes, humility is transformed into something even more destructive than the nightmare itself, which you have to deal with.
No less successful was the cast, which caused many for some reason a lot of complaints. Some went so far as to roll a barrel on Ian Holm, calling him inexpressive. Are you laughing? Hill did a great job in the role. Moreover, he gave Mitchell the unusual character of a man who is literally ready to tear everyone around him (adjusted for what he does as a lawyer) if only for a moment to forget about the injustice he had to go through trying to love a man who hates him. And just try to tell me about his lack of expression after the scene on the plane where he tells the girl in the chair next to him about how his daughter was bitten by a spider as a child, and what it almost turned out for him while they took her to the hospital! Personally, I almost bit my lip from waiting for the end of this horror. From him came a wonderful suffering father, whom you will surely empathize with, if you have a little humanity.
The last thing I want to mention is the atmosphere. As was said at the beginning, there is an element of mysticism in what is happening: snowy streets, dim light of lanterns barely breaking through the north, frosty wind with snow, night and day panoramas of the Canadian mountains, lonely figures of people standing in the middle of a white massif. The camera work and the soundtrack well emphasize the mood that everything is happening somewhere very far away, in isolation from everyday problems. Plus, oil in the fire of mysticism adds this tale about the Hameln rat digger (you know for sure, the piper who took rats out of the city and drowned them in the river), which is still healthy Nicole reads to children, periodically popping up in third-party episodes.
"Glorious Future" is a giant puzzle consisting of many human destinies, the solution of which is unlikely to be available to many at first. But I swear, when I finally understood it, I distinctly said to myself, "Wow... wow." I recommend it.
In a small Canadian town where a tragedy recently took the lives of 14 children — a bus overturned on the way to school — a prominent lawyer arrives to offer the “orphaned” parents themselves as “an instrument of their righteous anger.” Guns aimed at a car company that produced a faulty bus.
The money he promises to extort, although it will not compensate for the pain of irreparable loss, will help, according to him, to prevent other possible disasters. The intriguing offer is not to everyone’s taste: some parents understand that no money can return their children. Ultimately, the fate of monetary compensation is forced to decide the only surviving girl, whose recognition forces adults to abandon mercantile interests.
With some nebulous motivations, Egoyan brings to the film the philosophical scope and magical spirituality of the parable, which takes this story far beyond the framework of the judicial drama and eliminates the common morality that characterizes, for example, Hollywood paintings. This Canadian tape is ambiguous and versatile, even against the background of a variety of art-house products.
Events unfold simultaneously in three times - past, present and future. Cunningly intertwined, they connect to the final in a single chain. Immersion in the nooks and crannies of the spiritual world and God-seeking, dualistic conclusions and the inability to establish the truth, biblical allusions and purely existential conflict – all this not only distinguishes this film from the general list, but allows you to consider it one of the main artistic film events of the year.
Beautiful, very sentimental melodrama, addressed to the theme of the loss of children, a theme in an emotional sense win-win, but fraught with a certain tactlessness in the choice of aesthetic means.
The part of the film related to the death of children, the actual activities in the town of a lawyer, the theme of the Hammel rat digger, and especially the moral rejection of attempts to somehow link the tragedy with the trial liked unconditionally. Beautiful landscape shootings and decent musical accompaniment, lack of obscenity and a certain understatement in the motives of the crippled girl.
To me, the parallel drawn with the loss of an adult child, the sentimental part of the story about saving a daughter from a bite (small in volume) is superfluous, quite predictable and flat, more false than the main story. I didn't really like it.
The soothing atmosphere created by the director, the verified rhythmic drawing, the appropriate alternations of multi-time scenes were liked. On the episodic role of a disabled man, the director somewhere found an actor with the face of Anatoly Zhuravlev
After a bus with children rolled off the road in a snow-covered Canadian province and buried himself under the ice, the place is visited by Mitchell Stevens (Holm), an old prostitute with expressive eyebrows and a drug addict daughter. Mitchell is a lawyer, parents of dead children are employers, the goal is profit. While some moms and dads go crazy with grief, scandal, roar and are in a state close to shock, others collect papers to sue the company that makes buses. Mitchell, in principle, does not care - just to him, as we say, to cut the money. But the local tragedy quickly acquires a personal character when a rabid daughter calls from home and announces that she is terminally ill.
The Sweet Hereafter (absolutely untranslatable wordplay, something like “sweet underworld” and “pleasant future” in one bottle) of Canadian Egoyan is a completely charming thing, but a bit heavyweight. You watch it literally through the force, and about five minutes before the finale you are beating in an ecstatic fit, poking at the screen and choking with delight. The fact that everything is bad in the world, and people have an expiration date, was not shot only lazy (the closest in spirit, probably, released in the same year, “Ice Wind” Ang Lee, only there was about dysfunctional American families, and here – about rolling to hell Canadian, but it does not get easier). In Egoyan, this theme is played in a completely new, oriental way, with a sad flute and a thousand small and not very subtexts of varying degrees of complexity. Hereafter, contrary to expectations, is not a detective at all, although it would seem. The answer to the main question, which is tormented for two hours, will not be given, it will recede so deep into the background that it will not be so interesting to find out who killed the children. Egoyan, like the ever-memorable Niels, to whom Polly's heroine washes the bones with a red line throughout the story, leads his tame spectators-mouse so far that, it seems, there is nowhere further - only to the other world. And then hereafter ends.
There are a lot of "masterpieces" being removed now. They collect a “box office”, receive enthusiastic responses from critics and viewers, and in a short time these “great paintings” will disappear into oblivion. Atom Egoyan’s film Glorious Future is well known abroad, but is not popular in Russia and CIS countries. This is an author’s film, which not everyone can understand. However, after watching this movie once, it is impossible to forget.
Why is it so exciting? Definitely not a plot. Atom Egoyan's work follows a lawyer (Ian Holm) who is trying to file a lawsuit on behalf of parents whose children died in a school bus crash. The whole film is made up of dialogue and text. Sometimes it's very boring and protracted. Events move slowly, if not in a snail's footstep. It seems that nothing interesting awaits in the final... Ah no, in the denouement is waiting for a cruel sobering, instantly relieving the half-sleeping state that ran during the viewing. Egoyan’s Atom plunges the viewer from head to toe into the world of this town where everything happened. The lies, the meanness, the attempts to justify themselves. The film "takes" its atmosphere, magnetism, monotony and at the same time the cruelty of the narrative.
It is difficult to say what exactly this picture is about. It intersects a lot of ideas that are wonderfully veiled in every fragment and character. In the film, as such, two main lines of development of the plot: one tells about the lawyer, which is mentioned above, the other about a schoolgirl (Sarah Polly), who was lucky enough to survive the accident. In the course of action, their roads move in different directions, but at one moment merge into one whole. And this moment is a turning point for the whole film, since it is at this time that the whole idea, the whole essence of the picture, is revealed.
Glorious Future is markedly different from Atom Egoyan’s other famous work, Exotics, and for the better. In "Future" there is a very strong energy, which is completely absent in "Exotic", memorable primarily spectacular shooting. This film, of course, also has impressive angles, but thanks to the stylistics they fade into the background. This movie either like or not, but to leave indifferent even those who did not understand it, just can not.
The film is not for grades.