Word: guterson
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Director Scott Hicks (Shine) brings David Guterson's beloved postwar novel to the screen in this lush courtroom drama
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...
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...
...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...
...sweet-spirited and lacking in a strong enough sense of evil to make the triumphs of goodness seem earned. Yet as a response to best-sellerdom, the book--and its author--has the bravery to strike off in a new direction. The intrinsic difficulties of completing a novel, says Guterson, "pose enough problems without letting yourself get distracted by external problems." Nonetheless, the fact remains that if East of the Mountains were coming out under regular circumstances, it would probably be regarded as a worthy excursion from a deeply serious and accomplished craftsman. With a $500,000 marketing budget attached...