Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 5.0
The best movie released in 1999
This movie was hammered by the critics (except for a few, such as Roger Ebert). Perhaps it was it's 'stream of consciousness' feel, it's generous use of visual imagery, or dare one say the way it makes the viewer examine his or her own feelings? It's a very 'emotional' movie, and requires the viewer to be receptive to that. If the viewer is not, it won't work. That said, the acting is great - Yuki Kudoh and Ethan Hawke do an excellent job, as do the rest of the cast. However, it's mainly a movie about Yuki and Ethan, and their love. If you like love stories, then this is a movie love story for all time. Perhaps you also know that this movie was up for an academy award for best cinematography - it lost to 'American Beauty', a travesty if ever there was one. The cinematagraphy is just FANTASTIC - there is no other way to say it. And the end of the movie . . . well, it will break your heart, while re-affirming the 'life-giving' power of love. If you don't have at least a tear in the corner of your eye at some point in this movie, then you aren't letting the emotion in. Or out. I think that's what so many of the movie critics were unable to do. If you like love stories with emotion, filmed using the BEST OF THE BEST cinematography, don't make the same mistake the critics did. See this movie.