Product Description

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17988 in DVD
• Brand: Universal Studios
• Released on: 2000-05-30
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 128 minutes

Amazon.com
Australian director Scott Hicks's follow-up to his widely beloved Shine comes as a small shock. Based on David Guterson's bestselling novel, Snow Falling on Cedars is far removed from the character-driven, pure storytelling of Shine and a comparative plunge into moody atmospherics. Action insinuates itself through the director's determined eye for watercolor composition and free-floating perspective, like random shoots of new growth in an overwhelming rain forest. It's impossible to be complacent as a viewer because Hicks's meditative style paradoxically forces one to locate and make the story happen internally.

The approach makes good aesthetic sense in that Guterson's story couches courtroom drama in dreamy textures, and Hicks is determined to reflect that even if it means turning an audience's idea of narrative on its head. He also gets a lot of help from the weather in the Pacific Northwest: the setting is one of Washington State's San Juan Islands, where rain embraces earth and sky in a singular, introverted personality. There, a Japanese American war hero (Rick Yune) stands accused of murdering a white fisherman in the years following World War II. His wife (Youki Kudoh) is the former childhood sweetheart and lover of a local newspaperman (Ethan Hawke) whose bitterness over the loss--as well as his helplessness during the internment of Japanese Americans, and the crusading legacy of his journalist father (Sam Shepard)--prevents him from coming to the defense of the accused man.

Layered emotions, layered sensations, layered clouds. This is historical fiction of a sort that works best as an experience of time's relativity: flowing, stopping, trickling. Ironically, the film's most commercial element, the trial, is the least interesting aspect, though old pro Max Von Sydow makes those scenes great fun as a wily defense counsel. --Tom Keogh

From The New Yorker
Set in the Pacific Northwest in 1950, Scott Hicks's movie (his first since "Shine") confronts all the big issues: love, death, memory, war, forgiveness, racial hatred, and the irresistible urge welling from the heart of primitive man-to flick an entire bagful of M&M's at a movie screen. The story turns on the demise of a local fisherman, who died of either family vengeance or, more likely, boredom. His friend Kazuo (Rick Yune), a respected member of the local Japanese-American community, is accused of murder. Ethan Hawke stars as a young reporter covering the case; the attorneys are played by James Rebhorn and Max Von Sydow, who steals the picture as a way of passing the time. Given the additional presence of James Cromwell and Sam Shepard, it should have been impossible for the director to screw up; somehow, Hicks pulls it off. The film is so entombed in gloom and crummy weather, so rich in meaningless detail, that by the end you don't particularly care who whacked the poor victim, let alone why; on the other hand, under the weight of all that snow, you get a pretty good idea of what it feels like to be a cedar. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Beautiful Story, Difficult to Follow
As a reader of the excellent book by author David Guterson, I didn't quite know what to expect from a movie version. A book of this caliber and structure is not a book easily made into a movie. But through the collective efforts of the director Scott Hicks and great acting on the parts of Ethan Hawke, Max von-Sydow, and James Cromwell, the majestic beauty of the book comes alive on the silver screen. The only visible problem with the film would be the fact that some people simply won't get it. There are people who just enjoy watching a movie to be entertained, not to have to follow tough plot lines. These are the people that need to avoid a film such as Snow Falling on Cedars. The various plot lines and sub-plot lines revolve around the death of a fisherman, Carl Heine and the ensuing trial of the Japanese man, Kazuo Miyamoto, accused of killing him. The movie takes place during the trial, but flashbacks are heavily used during the testimony of the victim's mother, Etta Heine, as with all the other witnesses. Throughout the movie a different plot line emerges, one of more power and one of love. The plot line revolves around a local reporter named Ishmael Chambers and of his love for the accused man's wife, plus his inescable feelings of loss and regret. Circumstances tore them apart leaving Ishamel to wonder about what might have been. A beautiful story, but one that should only be watched by people that can appreciate the intricacy of the plot.

Very Good With Love Story Being Best Part
I enjoyed this movie much more than the novel upon which it was based. This is very unusual for me as it is usually the reverse situation. What I liked best is epitomized on the cover of the box. It shows the heroine as a child and the hero as an adult, even though, in the film, they are at all times the same age. The film, however, shifts atmospherically from their shared life together as children, adolescents and lovers to their lives as full adults. The hero is having a harder time letting go of that shared time together than she is. As adults of around thirty, they are as apart as they once were together. Her same-race (Japanese American) husband is on trial in their town for murdering a local fisherman. The hero is bitterly alone and has taken over his late father's newspaper. That he lost his arm fighting in World War II is part of his bitterness. The trial is the weakest part of the film and I could have done with much less of it. The rest of the film is so beautifully brought to the screen that it is annoying when the "typical" trial scenes play. Normally I love Max Van Sydow, the trial lawyer, but I could have even dispensed with him. Gorgeous cinematography enhances this film greatly. Ethan Hawke, who plays the hero, seems to be choosing his roles very carefully. After this film, he went on to star in "Hamlet 2000", where he was spectacular.

How the bitterness of the past can haunt one in the present
I can attest to the adage that the first person one falls in love with is forever, regardless of whether that person gets married to someone else or not. Well, in Snow Falling On Cedars, that sort of past comes back to haunt young reporter Ishmael Chambers when he discovers the husband of his first love Hatsue is being tried for the murder of fisherman/husband/father Carl Heine. The case for the prosecution is that Kazuo, Hatsue's husband, murdered Carl with a flat wooden object, such as a kendo stick (wooden swords used in stick fighting), and all because of the loss of seven acres of land owned by Kazuo's father when Kazuo's family was interned during WW2. Kazuo had demanded the return of the land, but because of two payments missed, his family forfeited the land, which came into Carl's possession. He is defended by an elderly lawyer, Nels Gudmundsson (veteran Swedish actor Max von Sydow in a strong performance), who as a Scandinavian, detects the race issue here. Pearl Harbor has not been forgotten, in other words. All the while, Ishmael sits high up on the balcony of the trial room, observing the defendant and his wife. He is clearly still bitter about the past, as he might have ended up with Hatsue had not circumstances dictated otherwise. This bitterness is manifested when he sits on some information key to Kazuo's defense.

Set in the fishing village of San Piedro, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, the film shuttles back and forth between the present, in the 1950's, and the past, in the late 30's to 40's. The film shows Ishmael falling in love with Hatsue Imada, a Japanese girl, and both their mothers disapproving of interracial relationships. The overall overcast setting lends to the forboding, oppressive atmosphere, but it works well in the forest, where Hatsue has a little hidey hole in the depths of a large cedar tree, a clandestine meeting place for the young lovers. However, the dizzying array of echoed and repeated voices, and montages connecting various bits of the past can be rather trying.

Of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor stirs up anti-Japanese sentiments, setting the stage for what has been called the largest wholesale violation of civil rights in US history: the rounding up of Japanese-Americans from their homes, confiscation of anything traditional, called "old country", and mass deportation to camps like Manzanar, which is the camp the Miyamotos end up in.

However, Ishmael's father, Arthur, the editor of the local paper, is very progressive, and protests the roundups, which leads to threatening calls and cancellations of subscriptions. At the time of the trial, his father has died, and he discovers to his discomfort that his father's liberal reputation is overshadowing him.

The Japanese traditions of girls being groomed to be graceful, e.g. sitting on one's knees without moving, the wearing of kimonos, etc. is something my late mother could relate to, as she too was Japanese. Hatsue's mother is one forbidding her relationship to Ishmael. Similarly, my mother's father, had he lived, would never have allowed her to marry my father, otherwise your humble reviewer's race would have been different.

While Ethan Hawke does well as the brooding Ishmael, he's overshadowed by other performers, such as von Sydow, Youki Koudoh (Hatsue), and Sam Shepard (Arthur Chambers). As the film progresses, one begins to understand his bitterness.

I haven't read Guterson's novel, so I don't know how closely the movie follows it. Regardless, it's a slow-paced movie, but not grabbing at times; somehow, the mixture of adolescent romance, and racial courtroom drama that lacks punch. But the message of learning to let go of the past, and the conditions that would allow one to let go, comes through towards the end.