Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 2.0
maybe not the worst conversion of book to film...but close!
I really enjoyed the original book on which the film was based. Although not the most well-written, it featured an interesting setting and good plot though the character development was weak. Still, one cared about the characters and what happened to them.The film is instead almost incomprehensible, whether visually, plotwise or with regard to the characters. For the privilege of a few beautiful landscape scenes you have to watch a two hour movie that seems not to have considered the absence of internal logic as a flaw in a plot-heavy film. This film tries so hard to be arty, it forgets to have a core.Though the original book featured flashbacks and flashforwards one didn't have to read it in the dark. But the film is shot with a minimum of light, totally chopped up in pieces that add nothing to the mood or the context, and someone who hasn't read the book will wander mindlessly through pretty landscapes missing the entire point of the book--which is about the human tendency to allow prejudice and stereotypes define our relationships with those different from ourselves. It could have made a powerful statement if the director had spent half as much time shoring up the plot and the internal logic of the narrative as he did pretending to be Ansel Adams shooting snow covered trees.