Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 3.0
The snow falls with only one hand clapping!
To rate a movie using the original book as the guideline is perhaps not fair to the film--after all, they are two different media.In "Snow Falling on Cedars," one is first gripped by the phenomenal cinematography. To review a VHS edition based upon what one sees on the Big Screen is also not valid. In this case, much of the effect is lost when the movie is "formatted to fit your TV." That being said, however, even with the deletion of the panorama, the photography still is this film's best attribute. Certainly, the photographers enhance the Zen utilized in the film to great success. The music is scored to enhance the visual effects and it, too, triumphs. At times, we find the photography as haiku--and very well "written" indeed!These aspects aside, the film founders heavily--it lists to starboard before it is over. Up through the actual trial, there is hope for this exceptional film; however, the director chooses to use Melodrama (with a capital M) as rescuer. Melodrama, in its place, perhaps, is admissable, but great films avoid it, and the trial's easy come, easy go "solution" and accompanying reactions are simply that: melodrama. This seriously mars the film (that and Ethan Hawke in the top billing role). Fortunately, the overall acting is saved by Max von Sydow, the aging attorney, standing for truth and justice for all. Granted, the film's attack on racism (this toward the Japanese following Pearl Harbor) is right on.Certainly, this theme is stressed in most effective ways and the viewer is left with a feeling that the defiled is vindicated.Granted, too, the book is excellent--but it is a book; this is a film and one "shouldn't have to have read ANY book" to appreciate a film.(Billyjhobbs@tyler.net)