Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 1.0
This Movie is a hard-to-follow farce
This asinine adaptation of David Guterson's "acclaimed" book was an absolute nightmare to watch. The slow paced plot and lack of consistency in this movie made it extremely extraneous to watch.What made this film so difficult to watch is the fact that it is actually three films interwoven into one. The main story is that of a Japanese man on trial for the murder of a white fisherman who wrongfully owned the accused father's land.The other stories provide some insight to the trial.The first is the story of a white newspaperman named Ishmael and Hatsue(now the wife of the accused). The second is the persecution of Japanese Americans and Japanese People during World War 2. We see depictions of hatred and ignorance,as law abiding Japanese citizens are shamelessly herded into internment camps.This gives additional information being as the trial takes place in the 1950's.As you can see this is a lot of information for one person to process.What we really didnt like about this film is how it jumps from story to another. its like right as you get into a story, BAM you are smacked in the face with a different story. this makes it hard to follow and frustrating for the teenage viewer. The main story in this film was very hard to understand with the other stories jumping in. The Japanese man was clearly put on trial because he seemed like a relevant suspect due to his history with the fisherman. It was difficult to get into the trial and make sense of the whole situation. We personally believe that this film showed very little relevance to marginalization. Snow falling on Cedars was a good way to show us teenage students that the Japanese was mistreated for their race but made us more confused and uninterested.