Through a dizzying series of flashbacks, we learn of the passionate adolescent love affair between Ishmael and young Hatsue Imada (Youki Kudoh)--now the wife of the accused. We learn how, from the depths of an American internment camp, Hatsue wrote to him breaking off the affair. We observe Ishmael's tortured reaction to her letter and understand his desire to gain some measure of revenge. We witness Hatsue's internment-camp marriage to Kazuo. We are told how, after the war's end, Kazuo learned that land promised to his family had been sold to a third party, and we hear tales of his furious attempts to get it back--attempts which allegedly ended in 1954 with the death of local fisherman Carl Heine (Eric Thal). Kazuo is now accused of murdering Heine, and he does not know that he could be freed by evidence held by his wife's childhood sweetheart.

Within this framework, director/screenwriter Scott Hicks (working from the prize-winning novel by David Guterson) creates a fascinating meditation on cultural misunderstanding. We watch as the Japanese and Caucasian children of San Piedro Island are taught the lessons demanded by their respective cultures--lessons which are well-intended, but which ensure that the schism between their peoples will endure. In the days immediately following Pearl Harbor, the island becomes a hotbed of racism. Local authorities haul the Japanese residents off to internment camps--an act which serves to justify the anti-white attitudes held by Hatsue's mother (Ako) and many of the other Japanese. When Ishmael's father (Sam Shepard) prints an editorial denouncing the internment camps, virtually the entire white community turns against him in a fury of anti-Japanese sentiment. And, in the midst of the hatred, Ishmael hopes in vain that his relationship with Hatsue will survive.

Much of the novel's success was due to the long passages of indirect discourse in which the characters reexamine their pasts and attempt to grope towards a solution. Hicks dispenses with most of these passages in the film because he does not need them. He knows that much can be said with few words, and he makes the most of it, turning Cedars into a movie about astonishing cinematography and fluid camera work. While the movie occasionally threatens to become too impressed with its own rapturousness (a problem that James Newton Howard's saccharine score does little to help), one has to admire Hicks' ability to communicate complex thought processes through long, wordless montages.

Because of the visual style he chooses, Hicks is able to retain the novel's dense, multi-tiered flashback structure. Though the screenplay is, for the most part, religiously faithful to the novel, Hicks does take a few very slight liberties with the ending. More cynical viewers may find his alterations maudlin; I found them highly effective--and appropriate, given the film's overall tone.

The actors in Snow Falling On Cedars are left with remarkably little to say--particularly the two leads, who are left with the difficult task of posing silently for Hicks's long montages. Hawke and Kudoh are both admirably restrained for the most part, and they do a creditable job in their scenes together. Max Von Sydow does a marvelous turn as decrepit defense attorney Nels Gudmundsson, as do Shepard and Ako as the parents of the young lovers. Also, Max Wright (as a doddering coroner) and Celia Weston (as the righteously bigoted mother of the deceased) deserve special mention for their brief appearances on the witness stand.

Snow Falling On Cedars is many things: an ambitious if slightly uneven visual fantasy, a murder mystery, a love story. But most of all, it is a parable about forgiveness, about the fact that injustices will spiral endlessly through the centuries until someone decides that retribution is not a viable option. And as we wonder whether or not Ishmael will decide to end the injustice by foregoing his revenge against Hatsue, we must ask ourselves if we can have the strength to forego revenge against those who have wronged us--lest it lead us to wrong others.