Review: Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)
[3.0/4.0]
The timing of events often has a great impact on a person's life. The central theme of this film is how an intimate relationship between two people can be affected by a large, outside force beyond their control.
The central character in the story is newspaperman Ishmael (Ethan Hawke), who writes for the town newspaper he inherited from his father in a small hamlet in the Pacific Northwest. He is a war veteran scarred by the loss of his childhood sweetheart, Hatsue (Youki Kudoh), who terminated their long-standing relationship while he was fighting overseas. The story begins when Hatsue's husband, Kazuo (Rick Yune), is charged with the murder of a local fisherman.
Although the events of Kazuo's trial form the primary component of the plot, the heart of the story is the relationship between Ishmael and Hatsue, and the forces that doomed it. Director Scott Hicks skillfully intermixes the two parallel stories. Their relationship is sporadically recounted as flashbacks, from to their friendship as children to their breakup as young adults. The force they could not stop was World War II, and its residual effects on American society. Anti-Japanese sentiment is a destructive force for the couple and a primary component of the trial. The trial overtly explores the elements that played more subtly between Ishmael and Hatsue.
The core of the film is satisfying but it occasionally becomes tiring when the story overuses melodramatic elements. The issue of racism injects melodrama, but breaks no new ground. The core of the story has wrapped up when Ishmael talks with Kazuo's lawyer, Nels Gudmundsson (Max von Sydow), about the helpless course of human life controlled by fate. It is a moving scene that sums up the entire story.
Recommended. This is a slow, introspective film which examines closure for things lost. Although the story overuses the issue of racism for dramatic effect, the exploration of the central theme is a rewarding experience.
(c) 2000 Murali Krishnan The Art House Squatter http://ArtHouseSquatter.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews