SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS (1999)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Scott Hicks

SCREENWRITER: David Guterson, Ron Bass, Scott Hicks

FILM STARS: Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, James Cromwell, Max von Sydow, Rick Yune, James Rebhorn, Sam Shepard, Richard Jenkins, Željko Ivanek

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: David Guterson

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1999

COUNTRY: Australia

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1995

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS:  A big, throaty, rural potboiler.

Both the book and the film.

Author, David Guterson, is a product of the pacific northwest USA and sets most (all?) his novels there. He knows his landscape and his peoples. His books (perhaps, as I haven’t read them all) are carefully crafted and precise.

This book with its small town scandal, various characters from various social classes, look at social mores, with romance, lost or requited love, mystery, courtroom action and harks back to the “big dramas” of the 1950s. Novels written by James Jones (Some Came Running (1958)), Sloan Wilson (A Summer Place (1958)), Robert Traver (Anatomy of a Murder (1957)), Grace Metalious (Peyton Place (1959) and Return to Peyton Place (1959)),
Charles Mergendahl (The Bramble Bush (1958)), J. R. Salamanca (The Lost Country (1958)), Don M. Mankiewicz (Trial (1955)) etc

These are all literate soap operas, some better than others but the people love these books. It is no surprise that most of these novels were best sellers. I can see why though. people love drama others suffer which is no far from what could befall you.

Not surprisingly those 50s drama all became big films, most of them big film hits.

Guterson, perhaps not surprisingly, sets his novel in the 1950s with flashbacks. This story could only, and not because the novel narrative requires references to World War 2, be set in the 1950s because it comes with the mores of the time (though with 90s explicitness – you have to keep the audience happy) and treads much the same ground as best sellers from that era.

It is clear and unfussy storytelling with an awareness of time and place though unlike the 1950s ancestors and despite the fact it is more explicit there is nothing confronting or shocking in the sexual revelations or in the crossing of social mores. The fun comes in reading a updated rehash of a 1950s novel with the safety of time.

And that is also what the film was trying to do. Just as the novel was a rehash of those 50s dramas the film was trying to be a rehash of the film versions of those novels. There is gloss, drama, and a bit of mystery that owes more than a little to film. The whole Japanese angle makes it like a cedar forest version of Bad Day at Black Rock (1955).

The film is slick and (seriously) beautiful to look at but long (2 hours 7 minutes) for its subject matter and perhaps a little dull in getting to the point. One IMDB reviewer referred to it humorously though perhaps harshly as “Eyelids Falling on Viewers”. Screenwriter Ron Bass was famous for writing screenplays which look better than they are. they are always tidy without ragged edges even if the subject matter may be off, so, perfect for reputable Hollywood. He wrote Gardens of Stone (1987), Black Widow (1987), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), The Joy Luck Club (1993), Rain Man (1988) (for which he won the oscar), Waiting to Exhale (1995), Dangerous Minds (1999), Entrapment (1999) and many others. Australian director, Scott Hicks, had broken through with Shine (1996) directs this with one eye on scenery and the other on the romantic drama … which he did later again in The Boys Are Back (2009),  The Lucky One (2012), Fallen (2016). Between them, no doubt at the producers insistent, they have spent more time on the romantic drama than on the dramatic mystery in the plot. It is very romantically lush at times and lost love after Titanic (1996) was shown to be box worthy. Douglas Sirk would have made the same and upped the drama, hinted at the (human) darkness whilst shortening the running time. The cast is uniformly good, though mostly all they do is stare and act as you would expect them to. Ethan Hawke is, perhaps, too modern to be a 1950s hero, even a anguished 1950s hero but he tries and Max von Sydow is always worth watching as are James Cromwell, Sam Shepherd, and Richard Jenkins. Željko Ivanek, Rick Yune, James Rebhorn provide the support and Youki Kudoh (who was wonderful in Jim Jaramusch’s Mystery Train (1989)) just has to look good, which she does, effortlessly. The film has enough to keep interest though not enough to be great and perhaps that sums up the book as well.

Still, you could do worse on both counts.

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