Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 4.0
An anguished, unrequited love story...
This is a love story about an American girl of Japanese descent and a white American guy, set before, during and after World War II, in the Alaskan Pacific Northwest. Ishmael and Youki were childhood friends who spent hours together playing in the forests. Many years later, before Ishmael is drafted off to war, they get engaged. Ishmael is wounded in Europe and loses his arm. While recovering in the hospital overseas, Youki sends him a letter terminating their engagement. The letter was sent from an internment camp.After the war, Youki marries a Japanese American man. He is wrongfully accused of a murder. Ishmael, now a reporter, out of dedication to Youki, heroically investigates and solves the murder. It is clear that Ishmael is still passionate about Youki. He has had no other woman in his life. It seems that Youki has always loved Ishmael but has buried it.Youki had terminated her relationship with Ishmael because of the difficulty of relations between white American and Americans of Japanese descent. Ishmael never accepted this but he accepted the fact that she was now married to someone else. Out of his dedicated love for her, he fights heroically to absolve her husband of the murder accusation.I say Youki should have not have terminated the relationship. Lindy says, given the racial/social situation, Youki did the right think in dumping Ishmael.The filmmakers seemed to borrow a little from "To Kill a Mockingbird," in the end. The whole Japanese-American community knows about Ishmael and Youki's youthful romance, and they know what he has done for her by saving her husband. In the final court room scene, all of the Japanese Americans in the spectators gallery stares at Ishmael in awe and silence.The film is very well made. The cinematography is excellent.