Snow Falling on Cedars starring
Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, Reeve
Carney, Anne Suzuki, Rick Yune
Layers Upon Layers Of Ghosts
Australian director Scott Hickss follow-up to his widely beloved Shine
comes as a small shock. Based on David Gutersons 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 directors determined eye for watercolor
composition and free-floating perspective, like random shoots of new
growth in an overwhelming rain forest. Its impossible to be complacent as
a viewer because Hickss meditative style paradoxically forces one to
locate and make the story happen internally. The approach makes good
aesthetic sense in that Gutersons story couches courtroom drama in
dreamy textures, and Hicks is determined to reflect that even if it means
turning an audiences 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 States 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 times relativity: flowing, stopping, trickling. Ironically, the films 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
The movie is about ghosts.
First, the ghost of the dead fisherman and the trial of the Japanese-
American accused of his murder.
Second, the ghost of a long ago childhood forbidden love affair between
the small town newspaper editor/publishers son and the now-wife of the
accused.
Third, the ghost of Pearl Harbour, WWII and the racial prejudice that
resulted in the concentration camps for Japanese Americ ans.
The three ghosts are completely twisted together, the newspaper editor
cant move on from his childhood love, the community can not rise above
the racial profiling it engages it.
Its a depressing, period piece, sad with the quiet street full of Japane se-
Americans, now war hysteria internees walking down the small towns mail
street to be ferried to Manzanar for the duration of WWII. The movie is at
least 75% flashbacks, it is very non-linear, very literary, not your usual
movie fare. There are two heroes, the defense lawyer and the small town
publisher, but they are completely overwhelmed by the masses of people
demanding that something be done. But the story is not about them, it is
about the two main characters, moving on and letting go of their old
ghosts.
This movie, like movies such as Farewell to Manzanar, are necessary to
dispose of our societys old ghosts. Showing them in the light of what
happened, and hopefully why it happened, in order that it wont happen
again. Ghosts dont seem to die if you just ignore them, bury them away
and try to forget. Just as he has to forget his childhood love, understand
that she is married and has a life of her own without him, the island people
have to come to grips with the fact that they transported their friends and
neighbors to camps in the hysteria of the moment. Every WWII movie i
see, i ask the question of how could the good Germans not know, not fight
the evil around them?. This movie partly answers that question with the
answer of it happened here and very few spoke up, the scene of their
transportation by ferry will be as rememberable as all those scenes of
German Jews marched to their death. This scene is the climax of the
movie, moving, saddening, and im afraid all too true and prone to be
repeated each generation, only with different faces and different reasons.
The music, the cinemagraphy, the plot and literary basis, the acting, all
well above average, very well integrated and deeply moving.
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