Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 4.0
A rich mosaic of a town, a romance and a sad time in history
Starring Ethan Hawke as a reporter covering a murder trail of a Japanese fisherman in Washington State in 1950, this is also the story of the sad time in U.S. history when Japanese Americans were forced into interment camps, and the reporter's teen-age love for the Japanese girl who later became the accused fisherman's wife. As the courtroom drama unfolds with an excellent performance by Max Von Sydow as the attorney for the defense, the reporter does an investigation of his own. He discovers facts about the incident, and must also relive his memories.Directed by Scott Hicks, the film is cinematographically beautiful, capturing the trees and the snow and the fog with a variety of film techniques. He also uses these techniques to tell the story, using flashbacks and overlapping dialog and partially understood events which fade in and out with a variety of degrees of effectiveness.I read the book by David Guterson several years ago and found it slow and talky. I found the video slow and talky too. Somehow, though, I could accept it more on the small screen, as I watched the events unfold, although they were sometimes confusing and clouded with moodiness.Although the story is interesting, I view the video as more of a character study of the people in this small American town whose lives were changed forever by the intrusion of WW2. The sense of place also seems like a study in itself.At 2 hours and 8 minutes, I found the video too long. But then, some stories take a while to tell, and the pace was very much in keeping with the style of the book. While I can't give it my very highest rating, I do recommend it, especially for a time when you might just want to relax and enjoy a rich mosaic of this particular time in history.