Product: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000)
Rating: 3.0
A black-and-white movie made in color ...
Grim.The title tells it all. The plot is already summed up quite tidily in other reviews. I would just add a few remarks.English is not Kudoh Yuki's native language. In this movie she does one better than Meryl Streep by actually demonstrating mastery of an entire foreign language by speaking American English with an American accent. Of course, she was already good at it, but we have to remember that Hatsue, being born and bred on American shores, was a native speaker. I thought Kudoh was very convincing. Yes, acting is not all about utterances, and her facial expressions may have been formulaic to some point, but this movie is worth watching just for seeing Ms. Kudoh do her stuff.And the movie had a profound message. Because of that and the fact that the story took place in a part of the world I was born in, I found the two hours generally satisfying.Here and there I found the behavior of the characters mystifying - especially crowd behavior.Why, for example, the silent march to the ferry dock? Forced evacuation of citizens based solely on race was truly a glaring violation of the Bill of Rights, but it was not mass genocide. The long walk scene was as drawn-out as it was grim. It featured a nagging bass in the soundtrack and dejected victims stunned to silence. Together they portrayed a stark black-and-white simplicity that I would question. I imagine that at least the children would still be children and think they were all taking part in some community outing. While the scene captured a certain psychological truth, it also was a bit too heavy-handed. We of the here-and-now know far too much and they knew way too little.But the movie is definitely worth the time and money.What I'd like to know, though, is why did they bother to shoot this in color?