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Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)
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Overview
User Rating:
Director:
Writers (WGA):
Release Date:
7 January 2000 (USA)
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Tagline:
First loves last. Forever. more
Plot:
A Japanese-American fisherman may have killed his neighbor Carl at sea. In the 1950's, race figures in the trial. So does reporter Ishmael. full summary | add synopsis
Awards:
Nominated for Oscar.
Another 5 wins
&
8 nominations
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NewsDesk:
(12 articles)
Reeve Carney Is The New Spider-Man!
(From EmpireOnline. 8 November 2009, 11:34 PM, PST)
Another Superhero Reeve As Carney Lands Spider-man Role
(From WENN. 8 November 2009, 3:06 PM, PST)
(From EmpireOnline. 8 November 2009, 11:34 PM, PST)
Another Superhero Reeve As Carney Lands Spider-man Role
(From WENN. 8 November 2009, 3:06 PM, PST)
User Comments:
flawed but rewarding film
more (184 total)
US TV Schedule:
Cast
(Cast overview, first billed only) | Ethan Hawke | ... | Ishmael Chambers |
 | Youki Kudoh | ... | Hatsue Miyamoto |
| 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 |
Additional Details
MPAA:
Rated PG-13 for disturbing images, sensuality and brief strong language.
Parents Guide:
Runtime:
127 min
Country:
Color:
Aspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Certification:
Finland:S |
Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) |
Canada:14A (Alberta/British Columbia) |
Canada:AA (Ontario) |
Canada:G (Quebec) |
Canada:PG (Manitoba) |
Australia:M |
Iceland:12 |
Singapore:M18 |
South Korea:12 |
Argentina:13 |
Denmark:11 |
France:U |
Germany:12 (bw) |
Ireland:15 |
Netherlands:12 |
New Zealand:M |
Sweden:11 |
Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) |
Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) |
UK:15 |
USA:PG-13 (936516) |
Norway:11 |
Philippines:PG-13
Filming Locations:
Company:
Fun Stuff
Trivia:
Ishmael never once pronounces the love-of-his-life's name correctly. He always calls her "Hat-sue" not by her real Japanese name "Ha-Tsu-E".
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Goofs:
Errors in geography: Ismael looks over the yearbook from his high school, Mossyrock High located in Mossyrock, Washington. The actual town of Mossyrock is in Lewis County, miles away from the ocean and Puget Sound, where the fictional San Pedro County supposedly is located.
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Quotes:
Nels Gudmundsson:
Accident rules every corner of the universe... except perhaps the chambers of the human heart.
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Movie Connections:
Featured in Spotlight on Location: Snow Falling on Cedars (2000) (TV)
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Soundtrack:
I Used to Love You (But It's All Over Now)
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FAQ
This FAQ is empty. Add the first question.more (184 total)
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`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.