Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 2.0
Beautiful, but too much wishful thinking.
There is no question that "Snow Falling on Cedars" is a visual accomplishment with its breathtaking scenery and cinematography. I did not care for the repetitive love themes and sappy music, but even these qualities are acceptable enough to warrant more than two stars.What finally made this film a showstopper for me was the portrayal of Japanese Americans as being helplessly dependent on white people. I don't object to the premise that a Japanese man could be falsely accused of a crime and that a white lawyer and journalist could help to acquit him. If this had been done in an intelligent and believable manner then I would have given the film more than two stars. But there are numerous indications in this movie that its really about the white person helping the poor Japanese people and the Japanese people submitting to him in return. This is evident in two critical scenes, one of which is visual and the other verbal. At the end of the trial, the Japanese people all bow to Ethan Hawke. This is done in a solemn, almost holy atmosphere and there's no question about the kind of mood that scene is trying to evoke: "all hale the white man without whom we could not make it through this crisis!" The second scene is the one in which the wife of the acquitted (Ishmaels's former love) runs out of the court room and says, "Ishmael, can I put my arms around you?!" From a dramatic perspective, I would have believed this scene more if the embrace took place with an unspoken understanding. But by adding the rhetorical component, the filmmakers inadvertently made this scene an act of submission. The Japanese woman is asking the white man for permission to gratify him because he has done her family a favor. This may not have been the filmmaker's intention but this is the kind of message these scenes impart. For this reason, the film--despite its visual quality--fail as a love story and as a realistic portrait of Japanese Americans.At this point, you are probably thinking, "oh here we have a politically correct reviewer", but this is not the case. I don't think there is a set of rules by which different races should be portrayed in film or other forms of art. What I object to is the flagrant manipulation in films such as this one--manipulation that could easily be avoided by improving its dramatic quality.I suspect that what we have here is a little bit of wishful thinking on the filmmaker's part. As most people know, the American government unjustifiably incarcerated Japanese Americans in a wave of greed and hysteria. After the war, these people rebuilt their lives from ground zero with no apology or assistance from the people who had put them in the camps and seldom-if ever-with the possibility of recovering their property. But this film would like us to believe that the white people came back to redeem themselves in the end. I'm not buying that fantasy. Two stars.