Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 5.0
The Architecture of Racism
I grew up in Maine where everyone takes pride in having "clean hands" on racism, slavery and other "unfortunate regional problems" ( even though almost every household most likely still has at least one book on the very popular eugenics movement of the 20's and 30's). I was 20 by the time I even heard of the holocaust..and a few years older than that whe I first heard about the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.This film tells that story as it unfolded in a small fishing village in the San Juan Islands..through flashback in connection with the trial of a young Japanese American fisherman for the murder of a fellow non asian fisherman in the fleet. It includes the classic "Romeo Juliet" story of a youthful love affair between the defendants wife and a local reporter following the trial.I have always wanted to know more about the internment of Japanese Americans..not just what happened but how it happened, how it emerged from American culture..how Americans could have done that to other Americans. And this film answers my hearts questions so beautifully, so simply, so compassionately giving us room to form our own understandings of what happened and how it happened in very human terms, in the terms of ordinary life in a small village.As with many stories told with flashback it is not a clear simple unfolding but then again the culture, traditions and humanity that combine to create this kind of narrative are not themselves a simple unfolding. The film, in my opinion, does a wonderful job of helping us to understand the subtleties of racism..perhaps even to see a little more clearly the biases within us to which we are blind and which we carry unknowingly into the world.My five stars are not so much for the cinematic art of the film ( it's direction, screen play, acting, cinematography etc.) but for the grace and simple openness with which it tells this story tgat is so important for all of us to visit historically..and within ourselves now.