Snow Falling on Cedars

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Review of Snow Falling on Cedars" [Posted on 2006-11-30]
The film "Snow falling on cedars" by Scott Hicks, which was released in May 2000,
Is about a murder trial in the US. The trial is influenced by prejudice and the clash of culture, between the Americans and Japanese people.

The movie transfers the flashback, which also appears in the book, pretty good by different camera devices, light effects and e.g. the echo of Hatsue's voice. The scenes are linked in a impressive way, so you can easily understand the plot.
You are overwhelmed by the flood of pictures from world war II or how the Japanese people are treated.

The cast is pretty good with actors like Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, Reeve Carney.

A must, for everyone, who love love-story's and exciting movies about prejudice segregation and ww II.

Interesting Meditation on Love [Posted on 2007-03-22]
Ishmael Chambers and his story is really the central theme of this book; the treatment of the Japanese in general and the murder case really are just the "deux ex machina" that allow for the exploration of Ishmael's obsessive love for Hatsue, the Japanese girl he grew up and had an abortive teenage affair with.

It's his reaction to her unilaterally ending their affair that is the core of this story.

The circumstances were particularly hard for him: he receives her goodbye letter while sent away to war, just as he is about to lose his arm (obviously symbolic of the way her leaving him left him unwhole). Probably because of the psychological trauma of his injury, his deep love for Hatsue turns obsessive, and haunts him for a decade. Without rehashing the entire plot, the trial of Hatsue's husband for murder finally allows Ishmael to come to terms with the fact he's lost her, though this is never as explicitly stated in the book as it was in the movie by the defense attorney.

The reader must make some judgments: is not all TRUE love "obessive?" If a lover can be just casually tossed aside like a used Kleenex after [...], was there any "love" to begin with? Or was it really just base exploitation to satisfy an out of control hormone rush? If Ishmael had simply shrugged his shoulders after receiving Hatue's letter and said, "Oh well, bring on Lover #2," what good would such a "love" be?

On the other hand, his obsessiveness tortures Ishmael for years to come, and prevents him from ever finding a new love again. So really, his story is a decade-long search for peace. He finds it, but in a way that is not particularly noble. From the moment Hatsue dropped him, he felt a tremendous sense of powerlessness - it was HIS love to that was taken away, HIS affair nullified, and he never had ANY say in it, and the effect on Ishmael was similar to the most personal sort of rape. For a decade, Hatsue never made any effort to make him feel that their love had mattered to her at all - something which underscores the obessive nature of his continued feelings for her, because in reality they are quite irrational... it's quite clear she never truly "loved" him at all.

What finally sets Ishmael free isn't some insight into Hatue's feelings for him, though. No, what sets him free is a decision he makes near the end of the book: for years, he harbored the fantasy she would somehow come back to him. With her husband on trial for his life, it appears to him that the fantasy may in fact possibly come true, after all... yet in the end he makes a decision that frees Hatsue's husband and ensures she never can come back (if indeed she ever would, because in fact their love on her part was never true to begin with).

And that is what finally sets Ishmael free: this time around, it was HIS decision - not just a unilateral one by Hatsue, for now HE TOO concurred that their love should not continue. And with that sense of empowerment, he can finally set aside the awful hurt of victimization he felt when, in his eyes, she took something from him without ever asking him.

A very intelligent book, that provides some deep insights into the nature of human love. It raises important questions, and actually provides some answers. It's up to the reader to decide, though, if "love" really is just a selfish thing, good so long as it is convenient for oneself - but to be cast aside the moment a price is attached, regardless the effect on the other person. There is, of course, a very practical and hardheaded answer to that - but one must wonder what it says about the character of the person that gives it.

A Timeless Film [Posted on 2007-05-12]
This is a great movie. It has everything: great scenery and background music, courtroom drama, young love, suspense, and human interest. I view it over and over again, learning something more each time about human frailties and prejudices. It is vastly superior to the trash being produced these days that relies on sex, violence, special effects and ear shattering sound without a plot and very little acting.

layers upon layers of ghosts [Posted on 2007-11-03]
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/publisher's 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 Americans.

The three ghosts are completely twisted together, the newspaper editor can't move on from his childhood love, the community can not rise above the racial profiling it engages it.
It's a depressing, period piece, sad with the quiet street full of Japanese-Americans, now war hysteria internees walking down the small town's 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 society's old ghosts. Showing them in the light of what happened, and hopefully why it happened, in order that it won't happen again. Ghosts don't 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 i'm 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.

Snow Falling on Cedars [Posted on 2007-11-21]
excellent story involving atrocities suffered by the Japanese at the hands of ignorance and the us govt.
scenery is spactacular!

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