Stars: Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, Rick Yune, James Rebhorn, James Cromwell, Eric Thal, Celia Weston

Director: Scott Hicks

Summary: Set in 1950, a fisherman, Carl Heine, is found drowned in his own nets with a serious head wound. His friend Kazuo is accused of his murder, as the trial gets under way some disturbing facts are brought to light.

Based on Guterson's best-selling novel, this is the story of a Japanese-American who must stand trial for the murder of a man with whom he's had a lifelong grudge. Ishmael Chambers (Hawke) is a reporter who has information that could potentially prove the defendant's innocence, but complications arise when he discovers that the man's wife (Kudoh) was his first love. The two were forced to separate after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but their reunion has Chambers confused about which choice he should make. Gorgeous photography highlights this romantic drama with a political edge.

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Australian director Scott Hicks's Snow Falling on Cedarsis far removed from the character-driven, pure storytelling of his previous movie, Shine, and a comparative plunge into moody atmospherics. Action insinuates itself through the director's determined eye for watercolour composition and free-floating perspective, like random shoots of new growth in an overwhelming rain forest. It's impossible to be complacent as a viewer because Hicks's meditative style paradoxically forces one to locate and make the story happen internally. The approach makes good aesthetic sense in that the story, based on David Guterson's bestselling novel, couches courtroom drama in dreamy textures, and Hicks is determined to reflect that even if it means turning an audience's idea of narrative on its head.

The director gets a lot of help from the weather in the Pacific Northwest: the setting is one of Washington State's San Juan Islands, where rain embraces earth and sky in a singular, introverted personality. There, a Japanese American war hero (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) stands accused of murdering a white fisherman in the years following World War II. His wife (Youki Kudoh) is the former childhood sweetheart and lover of a local newspaperman (Ethan Hawke) whose bitterness over the loss--as well as his helplessness during the internment of Japanese Americans, and the crusading legacy of his journalist father (Sam Shepard)--prevents him from coming to the defence of the accused man. Layered emotions, layered sensations, layered clouds. This is historical fiction of a sort that works best as an experience of time's relativity: flowing, stopping, trickling. Ironically, the film's most commercial element, the trial, is the least interesting aspect, though old pro Max Von Sydow makes those scenes great fun as a wily defence counsel. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Spotlight On Location, Deleted Scenes, Directors Commentary, Menu Music, Theatrical Trailer, Weblinks, Production Notes, Cast And Filmmakers Notes
Subtitles:	Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish
Year:	1999
Release Date:	July 21, 2003
Runtime:	128 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	820 513 4
Keywords:	General, Snow, Falling, Drama, Cedars
Genre:	Drama