The title is lovely. It's reminiscent of a haiku, a Japanese style of nature poetry which is limited to three lines, 17 syllables.
Sadly, the movie Snow Falling on Cedars is under no restraints in terms of its length. It just keeps going. Slowly.
The film's three-hour length is almost warranted by the content. The story, adapted from the bestselling novel by David Guterson, is a three-in-one: a mystery, a love story and a drama of social injustice.
The love story is of the star-crossed nature between the small-town reporter Ishmael (Ethan Hawke) and his childhood sweetheart Hatsue (Youki Kudoh). Since Hatsue is Japanese, their union is destined for trouble because Hatsue's family expects her to marry within her own race. The coffin containing their romance is sealed after Pearl Harbour, when Hatsue and her family are moved into exile in a Californian during the course of the war. (The social injustice part.)
Nine years later, Ishmael is a one-armed war veteran with a grudge. But it is he alone who may know the truth behind an event that puts a Japanese-American man, Kazuo (Rick Yune) on trial for his life. The mystery: Kazuo is arrested for the murder of a rival fisherman, whose family cheated Kazuo's clan out of their property during the war.
Despite the presence of his crusty, wiley lawyer (Max von Sydow), things don't look good for Kazuo, especially since he is now married to Hatsue. The deeply embittered Ishmael suspects another version of how a grappling hook ended up in he skull of the hapless victim on that fogbound night. But will he be inclined to help after having his heart broken by Hatsue and his arm blown off by some anonymous Japanese soldier?
Director Scott Hicks (Shine) takes his sweet time answering that question. It would take a considerable talent to weave the three elements -- love, mystery, injustice -- into an elegant, viable movie.
Hicks is not that talent.
The heavy-handed director apparently decided that the material warranted three whole movies, thus accounting for the film's arduous running time. Hicks saturates the screen with heavy, derivative imagery. A simple make-out session between the young Ishmael and Hatsue is rendered like some Adrian Lyne wet dream, with rain dropping all over the faces of the lovers as they gyrate in a cave beneath the roots of a tree.
The scenes involving the Japanese internment camps seem to be lifted straight from Alan Parker's feel-bad movie Come See the Paradise. Since Hicks can't hit each audience member over the head with a hammer to make them feel appropriately stunned, he does the next best thing by detailing the Japanese march out of San Piedro Island with no-holds-barred pathos.
The trial scenes are in a class by themselves when it comes to bungled narrative. Even despite the commanding presence of von Sydow (who inadvertently betrays Hawke as a wooden actor), this is indescribably boring drama.
Since the characters are all rendered two-dimensional pulp stereotypes, even that lovely title ultimately rings ironic. It's difficult to discern anything vital and alive hidden under Hicks's melodramatic snow job.
Now playing at Grant Park and Polo Park.
(This film is rated AA)
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