If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Excellent but underrated film

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It's 1950s Washington State. Fisherman Carl Heine's body is found. Japanese fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto is accused of the murder. Sheriff Art Moran (Richard Jenkins) and prosecutor Alvin Hooks (James Rebhorn) lead the prosecution. Nels Gudmundsson (Max von Sydow) is the defense lawyer. Judge Fielding (James Cromwell) presides over the court. Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke) is the only reporter in this small town. He's a returning vet with only one arm who still loves Kazuo's wife Hatsue from his childhood. In flashbacks, Ishmael and Hatsue struggle against war paranoia. Ishmael's father Arthur Chambers (Sam Shepard) is hounded for supporting the Japanese in his newspaper.It's got the snowy romantic moody atmosphere. However it lives too much off of it. The murder mystery is given short shrift. While watching the movie, I kept wanting the case be presented in a coherent way. The romance, the operatic style, and the prejudice are important but they keep getting into the way of the trial and investigation. This needs a short section where Sheriff Moran explains the case against Kabuo in a neat tidy package.

In "To Kill a Mockingbird", a man, Tom Robinson, is accused of rape, largely because he is African-American, and because he was kissed by a white woman in the rural 1930's South. In "Snow Falling on Cedars", a Japanese-American in the Northwest is accused of murder because a white fisherman is found dead in his fishing net not long after World War II. The setting is in the wake of racial animosity because of the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The case is largely brought forth because of prejudicial attitudes prevalent at the time rather than strong evidence. (Ironically, German-Americans did not suffer the same fate as the Japanese during the same period.) The brilliance of the film, which I assume is more or less faithful to the book, is its handling of several separate but intertwined stories. At the forefront is the murder trial of Kazuo Miyamoto, a young Japanese-American in the 1950's who fought on the American side of World War II, played brilliantly understated by Rick Yune. He is accused of murdering Carl Heine, a fellow fisherman, who now has land previously owned by Japanese who were forced to give it up (as well as most of their possessions) when they were unjustly forced into interment camps on the West Coast.The other stories involve Hatsue Miyamoto (played wonderfully by Youki Kudoh) and Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke in possibly his best performance since "Reality Bites") as star-crossed lovers before adulthood. We learn, largely through flash-backs, that the American white boy and Japanese girl met and fell in love on the eve of Japanese-American internment. Their story parallels the later court case, and the loss of their relationship is because of the racial divides imposed by the US Government, fearing that all Japanese-Americans were suspect because of their ancestry, rather than any evidence they were actually secretly in conspiracy with the Japanese Empire. The love between Hatsue and Ishmael is told through flash-backs. Hatsue is now the wife of the accused, and Ishmael has followed in the footsteps of his father and become a reporter and journalist. We learn that Ishmael still has strong feelings for the woman who once loved him when they were but children, but he is side-lined from their lives.Like "Mockingbird", "Cedars" is largely about the tragedy of prejudice and racism. One aspect of the story which emerges, possibly not consciously, is how the Japanese-Americans are largely similar to their white counterparts. They like much of the popular American music of the 1940's, they play games, they enjoy good food and wine. Of course, their interests in Buddhism are different, but I believe the point of the story is that the similarities between cultures are often overlooked in favor of our few differences. Although most of the focus is on the white community being wary of their Japanese neighbors, in a poignant scene, the young Hatsue is told by her good-intentioned mother that her daughter should not look at white boys, and should marry a Japanese boy. So prejudice cuts in both directions, often with tragic results. Some of the most heinous crimes in human history are perpetrated out of fear. And if someday, we could let go of our fears of "the other", maybe the world would be a better place.

Snow Falling... provides a legendary combination of acting, cinematography, story line, dialogue and history. One has the sense that the actors knew they were memorializing a portion of WWII and therefore provided an extraordinary level of craftsmanship.Love, war, courtroom drama, history and the silence of the sea combine to rivet your attention to the screen.Max Von Sydow, James Rebhorn and James Cromwell absorb the courtroom roles and give great performances. The Cinematographer won several awards for his craftsmanship.Treat yourself to this wonderful film.

Having loved David Guterson's novel, "Snow Falling on Cedars", we resisted in seeing the film based on it when it was released. Some times a book that is still alive in one's imagination doesn't compare well with what movie people can do to it; it can go either way. Fortunately, as in the case with this work, director Scott Hicks, who also helped to adapt it for the screen, shows a sensibility for the book as it shows in the finished product. The co-writer is Ronald Bass.The film is told in flashbacks. We are given the premise of the discovery of Carl Heine's body tangled in the nets and then the film goes into the trial in which the accused man, Kazuo Miyamoto, stands trial in spite of the fact he is an innocent man. Kazuo was a man that happened to be at the scene of the crime, but had nothing to do with what happened. His only guilt was trying to get back what had been the family's land from Heine.The film goes back to the time when Ishmael and Hatsue, who is now married to Kazuo, were childhood sweethearts. We see how inseparable they were and how they didn't stand a chance because they came from different ethnic groups. Hatsue's parents want her to stick to her own kind.Prejudice is shown as Japanese immigrants living in America were interred in concentration camps. This shameful page in the history of the United States changed forever the relationship between Hatsue and Ishmael. Kazuo went to fight in WWII on the side of his adopted country. Ishamel also goes to the conflict and suffers a loss of an arm during his time at the front.Ishmael, who is seen at the trial where he is reporting the process for his own newspaper, holds the key in solving the mystery. Even though he knows he will never have Hatsue back, he does the right thing in clearing her husband's name and his innocence.The film was shot in dark tones that renders the film with a sepia finish. There is not much color in Robert Richarson's splendid cinematography as he captures the bleak atmosphere of the different times shown in the movie. The editing of Hank Corwin works well in the movie. The musical score by James Newton Howard is an elegant compliment to the images one sees on the screen.Ethan Hawke's Ishmael has little dialog in the movie, yet, his expressions contribute to make his character a complex figure throughout the film. Youki Kudoh makes a beautiful Hatsue. Rick Yune plays the accused Kazuo. The great Max Von Sydow is seen as Kazuo's lawyer, the man who clearly understood what he was fighting for; he was an upright figure who opposed the prejudice and narrow mindedness of the small town. Sam Shepard, Richard Jenkins, Eric Thal, Arija Bareikis, James Cromwell and the others in the cast make valuable contributions to the success of the film.Ultimately, this is a Scott Hicks film and he proves he had a vision in how to stage the novel for us to rejoice.