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Australian director Scott Hicks follows his 1997 Oscar-winner Shine with a visually arresting realization of Snow Falling On Cedars, David Guterson's novel about a 1950 murder trial on a small island off the Washington coast. Using gorgeous photography that is careful without being deliberate, lavish but not showy, Hicks tells the chilly winter's tale of a Japanese-American accused of killing a fellow fisherman over an old family dispute.
As drama and weather descend on a snowbound courthouse, flashbacks fill in the story of Ishmael (Ethan Hawke), who since childhood has been hopelessly in love with Hatsue (played as an adult by Youki Kudoh, from a wonderful little overlooked film, Picture Bride). Despite her mother's fierce orders to avoid "white boys," they carry on secretly throughout adolescence and into their teens, until all the island's considerable Japanese population is shipped off to internment camps during WW II. Just as he is grievously wounded in the Pacific, he receives word she will marry Kazuo, an island resident now fighting the Germans in Europe. Years later, as Kazuo's trial is pending on the ninth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Ishmael uncovers obscure evidence hinting that the murder could have been an accident. But old wounds might forestall his bringing this information to light…
In addition to stunning, thoughtful imagery, Snow Falling On Cedars benefits from an excellent supporting cast that includes Sam Sheperd as Ishmael's father, whose newspaper business suffers for his editorial sympathy toward the local Japanese citizenry, and James Cromwell as the town's wizened judge. There's Oscar talk for Max von Sydow, who plays Kazuo's crotchety old attorney, Nels Gudmundsson. Despite the film's overall quiet tone, though, the script, written by Hicks and Ronald Bass, who's known for such mainstream melodrama as Waiting to Exhale, Stepmom, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, has trouble avoiding a few clichés. When von Sydow launches into one particular "I may be an old man" diatribe, it sounds uncomfortably like Sam Ervin's "I'm just an old country lawyer" speech from the Watergate hearings. Worse, and certainly less (admittedly) obscure, is the derivative resemblance the courtroom proceedings bear to those in To Kill a Mockingbird, down to the scene where all the minority residents make a show of respect for the trial's hero. Hardly glaring, these quirks converge to make the frigid climate seem rather sterile.
But it is all very pretty to watch, thanks not only to Hicks' direction, but the cinematography of Robert Richardson (The Horse Whisperer). It reminded me of an exquisitely crafted snow globe I'd be happy to have sitting on the shelf of a comfortable condo in The Bahamas. B
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