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Hereafter (The Random House Dictionary). Adverb: After this in time or order. At some future time; farther along. In the world to come. Noun: A life or existence after death; the future beyond mortal existence. Time to come, the future.
Atom Egoyan, the Canadian filmmaker of Armenian background,
has directed a number of powerful films that deal with the elusive and subtle dimensions of loss, mourning, and reparation. In his films, Egoyan manages to explore the collective and individual sequelae of trauma. Calendar, The Adjuster, Exotica, and his most evocative, The Sweet Hereafter, attest to the uncanny sensitivity of the director and to his intuitive understanding of the deep psychological ramifications of painful realities. A school bus skids into a frozen lake, sinking and killing fourteen children. The aftermath of this tragedy threatens to destroy the tenuous fabric of a rural, blue-collar community. The memories of the calamity are embedded in experiences of separation and loss. These memories, “whether they are conscious recollections or unconscious remembering as in the identifications of the mourner, are revivals of deeper memories” (Loewald, 1980, p. 160). The deeper memories are expressed in the longing for the lost object, those early experiences of satisfaction and frustration that ultimately promote the development of memory and the work of mourning. In this regard, Loewald reminds us that the words memory and mourning are closely related etymologically.
Should the memories of the tragic event be evoked by the survivors, or should the linking activity of memory be attacked so mourning and restitution become impossible to attain? In The Sweet Hereafter, Robert Browning's version of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” appears as an analogy to the tragic accident that took the lives of the children during a cold winter day in a small upstat