The Sweet Hereafter

1) Name three Key aspects of Postmodernism and explain how they apply to the film The Sweet Hereafter. The most evident aspect is the movie's non-linear timeline. Jumping from the present to the past to the future made the movie more dynamic and allowed for more opinions to be formed as well as more suspense to grow. The craftsman ship behind this was beautiful as there was next to no confusion on where you were in the timeline once they were all introduced. 
The second aspect, which lends to the reasons of why the movie travels back and forth from past to present to frequently in the movie, is the rejection of universality. First in the movie, we meet the Lawyer and his introduction to the story, continuing on to meet a few of the families. Proceeding this, we leave the present to return to the past and see the accident in the view point and perspective of one of the families (then this pattern is repeated with another family, the bus driver and then again with the young Protagonist). There is no Universal Truth in the movie since we are persevering the accident from multiple eyes and recollections from multiple minds. Of course what the father driving behind the bus saw from his car is nothing similar to what one of the children in the front of the bus may have seen. 
The third aspect which ties together the entire movie, being a constant to the narrator (our young protagonist), is intertextuality: borrowing or referring to other texts, often to bring new meaning to both texts. In The Sweet Hereafter the children's story book, The Pied Piper is the constant text referred to. It is the relationship of the protagonist to her father as well as the accident as a whole. The times at which the text are read by her as a narrator bring new meaning to the scenes. 

2) Why do you think the character Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polly), lied at the end of the film? What are various ways in which we ca defend the lie or do you think she tells the truth in the end?
I believed she lied (this is also my mind set looking at the scene once more through the mind of an anthropologist). Her reasons; protecting the relations that were still salvageable between the town members as well as saving herself from her father's pedophile nature. Her decision was noble seeing as she put herself in a position most would try to avoid, as well as put another innocent at fault (her testament said that she bus driver was going too fast) however at the end, we see her in the future 2 years later driving another tour bus with a happy ending.