Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)

A Japanese-American fisherman is accused of killing his neighbor at sea. In the 1950s, race figures into the trial. So does reporter Ishmael.

Director:

Scott Hicks

Writers:

David Guterson (novel), Ronald Bass (screenplay) (as Ron Bass)

Stars:

Ethan Hawke, Max von Sydow, Yûki Kudô

Nominated for 1 Oscar. Another 5 wins & 9 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Ethan Hawke	...	Ishmael Chambers
Yûki Kudô	...	Hatsue Miyamoto (as Youki Kudoh)
Reeve Carney	...	Young Ishmael Chambers
Anne Suzuki	...	Young Hatsue Imada
Rick Yune	...	Kazuo Miyamoto
Max von Sydow	...	Nels Gudmundsson (as Max Von Sydow)
James Rebhorn	...	Alvin Hooks
James Cromwell	...	Judge Fielding
Richard Jenkins	...	Sheriff Art Moran
Arija Bareikis	...	Susan Marie Heine
Eric Thal	...	Carl Heine Jr.
Celia Weston	...	Etta Heine
Daniel von Bargen	...	Carl Heine Sr. (as Daniel Von Bargen)
Akira Takayama	...	Hisao Imada
Ako	...	Fujiko Imada

Storyline

It's 1950 on San Pedro Island in the American Pacific Northwest. Commercial fisher Carl Heine Jr.'s dead body is pulled out of the water in a fishing net by his crew, he who died of head trauma. Kazuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. Carl and Kazuo were once friends, had known each other since childhood, but WWII has placed a strain on any sort of relationship between the ethic Japanese and Caucasian populations of the area, the Japanese population which was and is still substantial on the island. Carl had motive regarding a land dispute between the two families, land which Carl's mother eventually sold from under the Miyamotos and which Carl had just repurchased. Evidence also points to Kazuo being on the water with Carl probably sometime during his last voyage, evidence which Kazuo knew would put him in a bad light, adding on top of being Japanese, and thus decided not to disclose to the investigating sheriff at the time he was questioned. Kazuo and his wife Hatsue's fear come ...

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Plot Keywords:

injustice | japanese | fisherman | island | 1950s | 

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Taglines:

First loves last. Forever.

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Genres:

Drama | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for disturbing images, sensuality and brief strong language

Details

Official Sites:

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Universal Studios - Site Index [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English Japanese German

Release Date:

7 January 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

Mientras nieva sobre los cedros

Filming Locations:

Cathlamet, Washington, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$35,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$32,135, 26 December 1999, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$14,378,353, 12 March 2000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Universal Pictures, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Soundfirm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

127 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film in the year 2000 was nominated for one Academy Award which was for Best Cinematography for cinematographer Robert Richardson but lost out to Conrad L. Hall for 'American Beauty' (2000).

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Goofs

One scene shows a Coast Guard Petty Officer wearing a peacoat. His peacoat has his insignia of rank (red chevrons and white eagle) on the outside of the left sleeve. The US Navy and presumably the Coast Guard did not adopt the policy of wearing the insignia on the sleeve of the peacoat until the mid 1960s.

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Quotes

Arthur Chambers: That's the thing with girls. They grew up and break your heart.

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Crazy Credits

Jan Rubes and Sheila Moore are on the credits despite their scenes being deleted.

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Connections

Referenced in Sculpting the Movie: the Experience of Directing Shine With Scott Hicks (2015)

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Soundtracks

Benny's Boogie
Written and Performed by Clark Gault (as C. Gault)
Courtesy of Network Production Music

User Reviews

flawed but rewarding film

`Snow Falling on Cedars' stands as one of the most visually ravishing films of the past several years. Beautifully attuned to the natural splendor of its Washington State locale, the film actually converts its setting into one of the major characters in the film. Nature, in the form of topography, flora and weather, seems to exert, if only subliminally, as much influence on the people involved as their own actions and passions. However, there is always a drawback to a movie being so closely tied to its physical environment: very often the background advances to the foreground, ultimately overwhelming and dwarfing the human figures that should be our primary focus. Almost inevitably then, `Cedars' itself falls victim to this syndrome from time to time. Despite many intriguing elements in its narrative, we do come away remembering far more the stunning landscapes of rugged stone mountains, fog-enshrouded lakes and endless rows of snow-covered cedars than the characters at the story's core. Still, the film offers enough interest in the story and personalities to keep `Snow Falling on Cedars' relatively intriguing for the majority of its (admittedly overlong) 128-minute running time.

Set in 1950, the film chronicles the effect a mysterious death of a local fisherman has on the populous of a small island community made up mostly of whites and Japanese Americans, a death that, for complicated reasons, awakens many of the racial prejudices still holding over from the recently concluded war. As a Japanese man stands trial for the `murder,' Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke), a mediocre reporter for the local paper, copes with three basic issues: his unrequited love for the defendant's Japanese wife, the flaring-up of anti-Japanese bigotry in both the past and the present, and haunting memories of his deceased father, a socially crusading newspaper publisher, in whose shadow Ishmael toils and against whose professional reputation Ishmael is tested and found wanting.

The film is definitely at its most emotionally powerful in its superb middle section, which beautifully dramatizes, in flashback, the shameful deportation of these Japanese-American citizens to interment camps in California, for no crime more serious than simply being of Japanese descent. Parallels to the rounding up of Jews in Nazi Germany are never far from our minds as we witness this wholesale forced migration of a group of innocent people singled-out to assuage the prejudice and fear of an ignorant but powerful majority. For these scenes alone, the film is most assuredly worth seeing.

Unfortunately, the rest of the film cannot sustain this same intensity of deep emotional conviction. The forbidden interracial childhood romance between Ishmael and Hatsue, the current wife of the man on trial, smacks a bit too much of tired Romeo and Juliet melodramatics. Furthermore, Ishmael seems underdeveloped as a character, too dreamy-eyed and passive, just the kind of character that can be easily swallowed up in a film in which the background plays such a prominent part. Moreover, the easy wrap-up of the trial is woefully unconvincing and unsatisfying both as realism and as drama.

On the positive side, `Snow Falling on Cedars' boasts a fascinating dual-level structure, in which small snippets of information are introduced to us in the form of near-subliminal quick cuts representing memories or speculations on past events, often, oddly, those at which none of the characters involved in the current scene were even present. This latter inconsistency in the film's point-of-view may seem dubious and questionable from a strictly narrative standpoint, but the format does help to flesh out the story and characters in interesting and intriguing ways, intensifying the mystery as we attempt to piece it all together to finally get a view of the whole picture. Director Scott Hicks, along with his co-writer Ron Bass, succeeds in providing a richly detailed glimpse into a shameful episode in American history - and the lyrical quality achieved through Robert Richardson's outstanding cinematography helps the film override some of its more obvious flaws. If one brings an attitude of patience and a fine eye for natural beauty to the film, `Snow Falling on Cedars' turns out to be quite rewarding, especially for those misguided misfits who still, at this late date, justify and defend the actions taken against the American Japanese during the war. This film is a stunning rebuttal to both them and their idiotic notions. For that aspect alone, `Snow Falling on Cedars' demands to be seen.