Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 3.0
Poetry in Motion
The real star of Snow Falling on Cedars is director Scott Hicks. Working from David Guterson's beautiful novel, and with the help of the legendary cinematographer Robert Richardson he is able to create sequences of film of such intense beauty that you almost forgive the fact that film doesn't quite come togather as a whole.The story revolves around the death of a Caucasian fisherman in a Pacific North Western town a few years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. An American born man of Japanese descent stands accused of his murder. Meanwhile a local newspaper man Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke) watches from the sidelines, he has a vested interest because the man who is accused is married to his childhood sweetheart, his only true love Hatsue Miyamoto (Youki Kudoh). But the synopsis doesn't indicate how complex the story is, it is told with flashbacks, and flashbacks within flasbacks, making a mess of the film, but a beautiful and poetic mess.The performance were unfairly criticised by the critics, specifically Ethan Hawke's. His Ishmael is a bitter, heartbroken and wounded war veteran, and Hawke's understated performance expresses that perfectly. A man who lives in his father's shadow, never quite living up to the Chambers name. He has lost an arm in the war, and his bitterness towards Hatsue effects his reporting of the case. Now cynical and jaded he says "Facts you can cling to, emotions just fly away".The best performance in the film is Max Von Sydow's. He plays Nel Gud Mundson who is the accused's attorney. Saddened by the community's deep prejudice, now old and crusty he trembles with anger when he addresses the jury. Von Sydow should have been a shoe in for the supporting actor Oscar, but alas he was ignored.This film is also more observant when dealing with rascism. You see movies like THE HURRICANE idiotically simplify a system of thought that runs through out a society into a character of a bad cop. Snow Falling on Cedars is wiser, exposing the prejudice to be a deeply held belief among all citizens of a commuinity. A prejudice that is dormant in times of piece but all too apparent in time of war.I really wanted to love this film, something about beautiful imagery playing under a powerful musical score gets to me. Although I give the film 3 stars, I'm reccomending because it is both frustrating and inspiring. A film that demands repeated veiwings, but doesn't make that task easy. If you can appreciate dense poetic films like THE THIN RED LINE or THE ENGLISH PATIENT, you'll appreciate this one even if its not in the same league as those two masterpieces. I suspect Snow Falling on Cedars is a great film, but its structure makes that greatness hard to get to. It is a difficult film, but worth the plunge.