Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 4.0
faithful rendition of the novel
I am always skeptical with transition from a novel into a movie. Some directors have done their jobs marvellously & some of them lost the plot along the way. It took the author 10 years to write this best-seller & initially, I remained dubious if the director, Scott Hicks was able to compress the novel to almost 2 hours of viewing. What worried me the most was the ability of the director to convey the mood & atmosphere of the novel into the silver screen. Or else the essence of the novel would be lost. To be truthful, he's not only faithful to the novel but did the job with flying colours. The cinematography was simply superb & breathtaking. I was enthralled throughout the viewing absorbing every little bits that were offered to me. The production team of Frank & Marshall who had worked with Ethan Hawke before in Alive delivered yet another slick production. Scott Hicks deserved to be commended for a job well-done after his previous offering of The Shining, & the veteran, Max Von Sydow delivered a punchy performance as the defendant's lawyer. My girl friend, who hadn't read the novel before, found the movie rather abstract & at times, she couldn't grasp the story in totality particularly in how the film shots were shown. She reckoned that the story line itself was too simplistic & had been dragged on FAR too long. Just to prove my point, she slept half way through the movie. For her, she reckoned it's a so-so movie but for me, who had read the novel before, it's just sheer magic to see the novel on silver screen. I guess by having the author as one of the co-producers made a lot of difference. Highly recommended. It might not be to everyone's taste especially those people who are already used to David E Kelley's style in the series Practice but we ought to remember that deep down, this movie is still a love story, a story about how to let go & who-did-it plot was simply a percipitant to keep the ball rolling.