Metacritic reviews

I can think of no other movie that has dared to analyze grief and its aftermath with such naked honesty and precision.

This is truly a great film -- easily one of 1997's best.

It's all presented in a detached style that's ultimately much more moving and truthful than any heartstring-slashing weeper. This may be Egoyan's best work yet, and it's surely one of the best films of the year.

It's the survivors of this tragedy that must make peace with their fate, and the film finally rests with them.

This is one of the best films of the year, an unflinching lament for the human condition.

A little movie almost perfectly realized.

The chronological looseness is part of the pleasure of the piece, which magically reassembles in the last reel into something strong, lucid and compellingly powerful.

The filmmaker creates schematic, intuitive images that hauntingly crystallize the characters' situations.

The power and reach of this undertaking are formidable.

For all its mystery and its stylistic finesse, there is something vaguely plodding about The Sweet Hereafter.