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A timeless cinematic masterpiece can be easily overlooked and is oftentimes appreciated only years later. For me and many other movie lovers, the 1990s had the most iconic film offerings. In 1999, the classics The Insider, Boys Don’t Cry, Magnolia, Fight Club, Election, The Virgin Suicides, and Being John Malkovich were all released in the same year, which is twenty years ago. It is clear why a film focusing on the Japanese Internment and Post-War Racism used to be a topic of little to no attention. I could go on talking about how any of the Class of ‘99 films were and continue to be life-altering snowing falling on Cedars is one of my favorites and twenty-plus years later, the impact it left me with only deepens.
The serene imaginary town of San Piedro in 1950 comes to life when war veteran and fisherman Kabuo Miyamoto (Rick Yune) is accused of killing a fellow fisherman, Carl Heine (Eric Thal). A simple murder trial delves deeper into the overriding issue of racism and anti-Japanese hatred that inhabited the town during the time. Miyamoto, along with his wife Hatsue (Youki Kudoh), was interned in Manzanar, the Japanese extermination camps, with the other citizens of San Piedro. On the opposing side are Kabuo and Nels, confronted by a racist prosecutor (James Rebhorn is a role he was born to play), a spineless and lazy Sheriff (Richard Jenkins), and a community of furious white families. An added twist is the newspaper editor (Ethan Hawke), still infatuated with Hatsue from a childhood love gone sour, who has the evidence that might just get Miyamoto off the hook. At the forefront of compassion stands Miyamoto’s attorney, Nels Gudmundsson (Max von Sydow), the sole beacon of virtue and justice in the film.
Scott Hicks directs this beautiful adaptation of the award-winning novel by David Guterson. The film aims to capture both modern and classic styles of storytelling. We have the courtroom drama, the journalist solving a mystery, the unrequited love story: all elements of classical film. What stands out in this film are the contributions of Hicks, cinematographer Robert Richardson, and editor Hank Corwin to its structure and visual storytelling. The film is unique in its use of non-linear editing; the way the film is flashed back is reminiscent of Nic Roeg’s best works. Visually, this may be one of Richardson’s most impressionistic and chiaroscuro-esque works to date.
Ethan Hawke may be the first on the credits of the film but it is the rest of the astonishing cast that put the flesh to the bones. Not to take away from Hawke as Ishmael, the morally stained Editor of the Newspaper, who was amazing in his role. Hawke’s performance is so internalized, allowing the filmmakers to craft an internal life through editing.
This time, the praise should be directed toward the cast of phenomenal actors that make our courtroom drama come to life. Specifically, Max von Sydow, James Cromwell, James Rebhorn, Richard Jenkins, and Rick Yune all do wonderful work here. These men create a dance of understated performance that only cinema can bring you. Much of the work is done through glances and reactions. Yune, especially as the man on trial, who happens to be the actor, creates a performance that is both a part of the whole but more fundamentally, depicts a Japanese man in the 1950s. A good number of the struggles that Kabuo goes through have to be faced with a stone-cold poker face. Yune excels at this because and always shows underneath that mask the struggle the man is going through.
Sydow steals the show as Nels. His character embodies the heart and soul of the film, desperate for justice and to prove that his theory of goodness in people is in fact true. In the possession of von Sydow, Nels’ closing statement is nothing short of beautiful.
If it were any other actor, it might not have worked, but with von Sidow, it is achingly beautiful in a way that only a person marked by age could pull off. In any other actor’s hands, it may have fallen flat, but in von Sydow’s it’s a thing of frail beauty that only someone as worn gracefully by age could have acted. *One wishes that more was focused on the Japanese and their struggles both pre-WWII and post-WWI in the novel that was written with such great detail on their struggles and history. What do we get, is the rest fascinating, respectful, and artfully composed? One wishes Hicks, Ronald Bass, and the screenwriter had more power to shift the paradigm and create a larger narrative with the Japanese playing a larger part instead of their Anglo counterparts. What we are left with is beautifully composed, powerful heady filmmaking.
Snow Falling on Cedars is artful socially conscious studio filmmaking at its apex in the late ’90s. It is a shame that studios rarely, if ever, venture into this type of filmmaking.
Accident Rules composes a brand new 52-minute making-of featurette that includes Director Scott Hicks, novelist David Guterson, Cinematographer Robert Richardson, and Composer James Newton Howard. It is separated into four parts; The adaptation, The Production, The Cast, and Post-Production. This is a wonderful detailed overview of the film. In particular, the detailed post-production section is quite effective and detailed giving you a real idea of how the film was constructed. Anyone who has seen the film will know how elliptically edited and put together, and how important post-production.
There are a number of fascinating multi-minute deleted scenes and some alternate edits from certain pieces of the work. It does make one wonder whether there are multiple cuts or a longer version–a thought raised when Hicks mentions that he has over half a million feet of film to work with. One of the phrases that honestly deserves the best praise was von Sydow’s 3-minute and 35-second Nels and Kazuo chess-playing sequence. A longer alternate take of Nels summation is also available and as always, more von Sydow is so much better.
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