In other words, this is the kind of epic movie studio publicists call "multilayered" and "elegiac." And which moviegoers with their fraud detectors turned up might call "self-important" and "overblown."
Somewhere in this maze of poetic intentions and glazed-eyed dreaminess lies the germ of an idea -- the secret life of a small town with old hatreds festering in its heart. In 1954, on Washington state's fictional San Piedro Island, a young Japanese-American (Rick Yune) is put on trial for the murder of a local white fisherman, and the proceedings stir up memories, resentments and prejudices reaching back to Pearl Harbor and beyond. This is a subject Hollywood has now and then addressed, most notably in the Spencer Tracy classic Bad Day at Black Rock, which remains, 45 years after its release, a model of dramatic economy and emotional power.
If only Hicks and his profligate collaborators had taken a few lessons in restraint from Black Rock director John Sturges. Instead, this badly muddled adaptation of a complex novel chases after Guterson's many skeins and themes with no unifying principle in mind -- except for a kind of gooey reverie. What's important here? The impacted prejudices of flinty townsfolk who, nine years after the war's end, still want to lynch a "Jap"? The romantic trauma of a young newspaper reporter (Hawke) who was once deeply (and secretly) in love with the accused man's wife (Youki Kudoh)? The insecurities our hero must bear because his late father (Sam Shepard) was a crusading editor whose reputation the son cannot match? How about the burden of history itself?
A more able group of filmmakers might have been able to sort and juggle these elements -- and more -- with skill. But stylistically, Cedars is a mess. Hicks stuffs flashbacks inside flashbacks and dices memories into other memories with such fiendish abandon that his time frames get as jangled as an acid trip. If you don't pay very close attention, you might get the impression that Japanese-Americans interned in 1942 are still being held in 1954. The movie's pace is plodding, but the bewildering Hicks, in cahoots with co-screenwriter Ron Bass, yanks us in and out of his courtroom with utter disregard for our equilibrium. Meanwhile, Richardson's camera never quite finds its way through the gloom.
That the entire film looks underlit and murky is less a tribute to the radical who started it all in the mysterious atmosphere department, Godfather cinematographer Gordon Willis, than it is the symbolic expression of this movie's overall confusion. I still don't have a very good idea of what Cedars' leading lady looks like, so often is she glimpsed in darkness and shadow. And if you're not all that familiar with Hawke, late of Gattaca and The Newton Boys, you still wouldn't be able to pick him out of a lineup after watching this. Such a dearth of candlepower has a few advantages, of course: Old hands like James Rebhorn and Max Von Sydow, who play the vicious prosecutor and the inspirational defense attorney, will probably be taking home stacks of flatteringly lit promotional stills.
Devotees of Guterson's novel are bound to have the same complaints readers always have when a complex and admirable book makes its way to the multiplex -- that the beauty and originality of its language have evaporated, the profundity is gone, and once-rich characters now seem shallow and one-dimensional. All that happens again here, and what's worse, even Cedars' most important message, the one about humanity, integrity and decency going on trial in a small American town, seems to be badly compromised. This epic seems more interested in the drama of its violin swells, dew falling from a trembling fern and riddles of its own structure than in the conscience of men or the qualities of justice. In the end, it's pretty but empty.
