Snow Falling on Cedars
Posted By Lonesome Loser on February 10, 2009
*SPOILER WARNING: All film discussions may include information that would spoil the ending for viewers who have not yet seen the film.
Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)is a haunting and understated film on the pain of unrequited love (amongst other themes). The protagonist and would-be lover is Ishmael, played by Ethan Hawke. Set in the years surrounding WWII, as a boy Ishmael falls in love with his Japanese neighbor, Hatsue. For Ishmael, this love is as real and true as it gets. Unfortunately for him, this is not the case for Hatsue. For her, the relationship with Ishmael has never felt completely “right.” They make love as teenagers, before he goes to war, and this clarifies for Hatsue how “wrong” their relationship feels to her. She writes him a letter detailing these feelings while he is in combat. For Ishmael, this is a devastating blow. The film symbolizes this loss when Ishmael has an injured arm amputated and mutters to himself “fucking Jap bitch.” He has literally lost a part of himself as he has lost Hatsue’s love.
Meanwhile, Hatsue and her family having committed the crime of being Japanese-American during WWII, and so have been sent to an American concentration camp. It is here Hatsue meets her husband-to-be, a handsome Japanese officer named Kazuo. Kazuo’s shared history and values are very important to Hatsue, she is able to recognize more specifically what did not feel right in her relationship with Ishmael. She falls in love, and they marry.
The film’s plot centers around Hatsue’s Japanese-American husband being accused of murder many years later. Now a journalist, Ishmael, in what can only be seen as a token of his undying love for Hatsue, works to exonerate Hatsue’s husband. They have not spoken in several years, Hatsue putting distance between them for the sake of propriety and perhaps concern for his feelings. After the trial, the film ends with Hatsue asking Ishmael if she may hug him now. He agrees, and we see in his face that he is still in love with Hatsue, he probably always will be, and the pain he feels at being shut out of her heart.
I really feel for Ishmael in this film. For both Hatsue and Ishmael, really, but more completely for him. He did nothing wrong, was only born into the wrong circumstances for Hatsue to truly love him. (Good Lord, I’m totally talking about myself and my own experience here, I just realized). In working to exonerate the most important person in the world to Hatsue, her husband, Ishmael is able to be closer to her, to have more impact on her, than he has in many years. The film is a sort of chronicling of Ishmael’s love offering to Hatsue, as if to a temple he has been shut out of but still he keeps the faith.
Please offer comments on this review, your own thoughts on the film, or suggest other films for us to discuss…
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