He is a middle-aged urban lawyer named Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), and his first scene in the movie shows him having a phone conversation with his daughter, who has been drifted away from him for many years as mired in drug addiction. Maybe she simply wants to have a sincere talk with her father this time, but he sticks to his detachment as dreading the worst (“I don't know who I'm talking to right now”), and that leads to another hurtful moment between them.
Stephens has just come to a small rural town which has been devastated by a recent terrible accident. In one cold, snowy winter morning, a school bus carrying a bunch of local kids crashed into a frozen lake after skidding on an icy road, and 14 children were killed as a consequence. As many of these unfortunate kids’ parents cope with resulting anger and grief, their urge to blame whoever is responsible for the accident grows stronger; Stephens is going to persuade some of these parents to file a class action lawsuit for damages.
While he meets his potential clients one by one, he is presented as someone who cannot be merely defined as a righteous crusader or an opportunistic ambulance chaser. As a guy who virtually lost his child, he deeply sympathizes with his potential clients, and he wholeheartedly believes they must get any sort of financial compensation, but he is also driven by cool professionalism. This complex human side of his is exemplified well by the scene where he succeeds in persuading a grieving couple to hire him. After patiently listening to them, he uses every bit of his sincerity and resolution for convincing them of the moral necessity of the lawsuit. Still, he cannot help but get a little excited as he later goes outside to get a document to be signed by them.
In the meantime, the movie frequently flashes back and forth among its three different time points. While the "present" part shows Stephens’ steady work process step by step, the "past" part presents the town and its people before the accident, and the "future" part revolves around Stephens’ accidental encounter his daughter’s childhood friend on an airplane, which, as clearly shown in the beginning, happens around 2 years after the accident.
This non-linear narrative initially seems artificial, but, like many of Egoyan’s notable works including “Exotica” (1995), the movie, which is based on the novel of the same name by Russell Banks, works fluidly along its own emotional narrative with precise dramatic effects. For instance, observe how Stephens’ estranged relationship with his daughter is juxtaposed with another father and daughter relationship in the film – and how these two contrasting but equally problematic relationships resonate with each other as we get to know more about them later.
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