Expands January 7, 2000

Snow Falling on Cedars is just that. There's a lot of snow in this movie -- falling, falling, falling… on cedars. Where novelist David Guterson disguised his book's touchy-feely message in flowery prose, director Scott Hicks tries to do the same with breath-taking visuals. The result is a beautifully filmed movie (courtesy of D.P. Robert Richardson) that doesn't say much worth saying. The message here of racial tolerance and acceptance of lost love feels all too familiar and its treatment by writers Hicks and Ron Bass is both perfunctory and elliptical, a bad combination for a romantic message movie.

There's a lot going on in this film and not all of it fits together. It's part murder mystery, part love story and part political lecture. Yet, given the seemingly explosive nature of these themes, it is surprisingly lacking in drama and, for that matter, logic. The story begins in the present with the arrest of Japanese-American fisherman Kazuo Miyamoto (Rick Yune), who is unjustly accused of murdering fellow Caucasian fisherman and former friend Carl Heine (Eric Thal), whose mother bilked Kazuo out of some farm land. As Kazuo is put on trial, his wife Hatsue (Youki Kudoh) and newspaper man Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke, doing his best "Ethan Hawke" impression) watch the proceedings intently, both having a vested interest in the events. For Hatsue, she sees her happy life potentially being destroyed if her husband is convicted. For Ishmael, he struggles with whether he should come forward with evidence that might vindicate Kazuo.

Ishmael's conflict comes from his shared past with Hatsue, which we see unfold in flashback. As children, they were dear friends and, as they grew older, they became tender young lovers. Yet, with the advent of World War II and the American government's decision to put Japanese Americans in internment camps, Hatsue came to believe that she should be with her own kind. She abruptly broke off her love affair with Ishmael, while he fought for his country. Unfortunately, this emotional turning point --where Ishmael reads Hatsue's letter of rejection -- is by far one of the most heavy-handed sequences in recent film making, combining obtuse poetic images like a flopping fish with overlapping voice-over and soaring music. It's all too much and the actual impact of this scene is lost in the melodrama, a problem that pervades the entire film.

So, we learn that Ishmael went to war, lost his arm and came to share the prejudices of his peers for the Japanese. This moral shift is explained away in one brief, ineffectual and rather crude scene when Ishmael is having his arm amputated. We never quite understand if his hatred stems from Matsue's rejection or his physical loss. Nonetheless, he brings this hate back from the war and when he discovers evidence that could free Kazuo, he sits on it. This choice is, quite frankly, inexplicable, considering that a man's life hangs in the balance. Perhaps, he has some odd notion that if Kazuo goes to jail, he'll get Matsue back. This is, of course, the "lost love" element that is revisited again and again in the film. Or, maybe, he simply wants revenge on a symbolic token "Jap", as does the rest of his insular community. Whatever the motivation, it is illogical and confusing, presenting Ishmael as a soulless character who has never achieved any closure in his life. Ethan Hawke's portrayal doesn't do much for Ishmael's level of complexity. In his hands, Ishmael is a bland, passionless individual, whose emotional struggles never seem rooted in any tangible pain.

In many ways, the filmmakers here were fighting a losing battle. This story is based in sentimentalism and moralizing, exploring the tenuousness of the human heart against a backdrop of prejudice. It's less about a plot than an emotional state of being, and a state of being simply doesn't make for a good movie. While director Hicks eagerly captures the mood of the piece with his elegant, monochromatic imagery, his editing and technical choices do little to make the story coherent. It's beautiful to look at, but you don't feel anything, except perhaps confusion about what's really at stake here. The blame falls soundly on Hicks' and Bass's obvious screenplay, which hits all the predictable buttons -- prejudice, lost love, healing the soul -- while inexcusably ignoring the more subtle nuances of the characters' feelings and choices.

During the film, one of the characters claims that "every once in awhile, you get called on to give a report card for the human race." The statement couldn't be more obvious, as obvious as the attempted message with a capital "M" that runs through the film. Perhaps, Hicks and Bass were too anxious to embrace the symbolism of Snow Falling on Cedars and less prepared to simply tell a story. In other words, the moral here is: Less snow, more soul.