Snow Falling On Cedars

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

STARRING: Ethan Hawke, Youki Kudoh, Rick Yune, Max von Sydow DIRECTOR: Scott Hicks OPENS: limited Dec. 22; wide Jan. 7

Snow Falling On Cedars is essentially a liberal soap opera. Its simple, anti-prejudice message is hidden (in David Guterson's novel) behind dense thickets of rich, writerly prose and a narrative that moves large numbers of characters back and forth in time as it proceeds, in its leisurely way, to solve the murder mystery that serves as its none-too-robust pacemaker. Readers in the millions took the book seriously because Guterson was so serious about it, though it did not hurt that his setting--an island in Puget Sound, before, during and immediately after World War II--was fresh and exotic.

Director Scott Hicks' version is faithful to the story's main beats. There's Ishmael, the physically and emotionally wounded hero (Hawke); Hatsue (Kudoh), the forbidden and then lost love of his childhood; her husband Kazuo (Yune), charged with killing an Anglo neighbor after a land dispute; and all kinds of characters who behave well and badly as his trial unveils the community's hatreds and suspicions.

Screen time is different from novel time, and it takes a lot of it for Ishmael to rediscover his "good heart" and bring forth the hidden truth that will free the accused. While he dawdles and moons, the wind starts to whistle through the story's riggings and we begin to suspect that there was always less in it than met an eye distracted by Guterson's fancy writing.

--R.S.