Valor da Vida

The Human Web, based on the hit stage play, The Sacrifice, revolves around CJ, a formerly Yale-bound young man recently released from prison after being convicted of a crime he did not commit. Struggling to make sense of life and burdened by internal conflicts, he finds himself slowly drifting into a world of drugs, betrayal, and revenge- a world eagerly introduced to him by his best friend, Wes. Wes manipulates CJ through CJ's affection for his girlfriend and through CJ's blind faith in their friendship. As CJ begins to lose himself to this alien life, he distances himself from his family members, each of whom also struggles with coming to grips with their own painful realities. A mother, Annie, who is patiently waiting for her husband to return home after he walked out of the family for no apparent reason sixteen years ago. Michael, his Harvard bound younger brother, is on life support due to taking a bullet for his brother. Annie has to make the dreadful decision to remove or not to remove Michael from the machine. A sister, Jill, who is struggling with the thought she could have contacted aids from a rape that she never told anyone about to protect the identity of the rapist. To complicate matters, the father returns home determined to take his son off life support. This sets off a chain of actions no one was expecting...mainly CJ. Slowly the family realizes they are trapped in a web of their own design with no way of escape. Blissfully unaware and crippled by his own refusal to acknowledge danger, CJ finds himself on the brink of destruction, only to be brought back by a painfully eye-opening sacrifice, which finally enables him to distinguish between fact and fiction.

Un hiver, dans le village de Saint-Gatien-Ouest, un inconnu descend d'un train en provenance de la ville tandis que dans la vaste cuisine de la famille Fortin, on annonce, à la radio, l'évasion à Montréal d'un criminel. L'inconnu s'identifie comme l'héritier de Joseph, un membre de la famille Fortin, qui s'était exilé au États-Unis. Cet héritage est la terre que son père avait laissée en friche. L'individu, que l'on compare spontanément au géant Beaupré, est reçu avec affabilité. Par ses qualités physiques et morales, le Gros Bill comble les aspirations et les rêves des habitants de Saint-Gatien.