Growing up in a community split between European and Japanese descendents, two
children, a girl and a boy, cross the forbidden divide, growing into lovers. Nobody knows of their hideaway beneath the giant
cedar, there in the Pacific mist.
Joy and passion envelop them.
Soon Pearl Harbor is attacked, Hatsue is sent to an internment camp and Ishmael does nothing. He loses an arm in the war, she marries and returns to her old home. Her husband is accused of murdering a fellow fisherman and Ishmael takes a professional interest as the local reporter, but he is full of confusion and latent anger. During the war Hatsue wrote him and said after their one occasion of intercourse she knew their relationship would go nowhere; she did not love him.
Their story
together, overcoming the frenetic editing imposed on it, is far more important
than the trial. Some real attention to detail went into
the issues of the case—the cause of death, the role of prejudice in an ideally
impartial system, the designs of the prosecution, the possible motive of
long-standing family grievance, the atmosphere of momentous occasion muffled by
heavy snow, dimly lit by oil lamp.
But the love story is not conveyed with equal persuasiveness.
Its mysteries are left unexplained.
Hatsue does not seem to have any problem with Ishmael until she is forcibly
removed with her family. One
character discusses the obsession that Ishmael has developed.
Hoping to relieve this obsession, he seeks out Hatsue during the trial,
amidst the same terrain they frequented as children. Gingerly traversing a stretch of fallen timber, Hatsue stops.
Ishmael reaches for her but she pulls away.
Trying to regain balance, his attempts frustrated by a missing arm lost to the
war, Ishmael succumbs, sinking down pitifully.
She tells him she has done a terrible thing. What that could be remains unknown. But it's a great moment.
Ishmael had been collecting evidence to free the accused.
But he kept it to himself. Now,
finding new resolve from his brief conversation with Hatsue, he decides to
share it with her family. Ishmael may have been, heretofore,
allowing his anger against the girl to consume him.
She severed all ties with him during the war and he never got over it.
He may want to punish the husband, to punish her.
But a sense of imminent self-destruction, a desire to live up to the ideals of
his departed father—something sways him, something ambiguous. For all the extraneous detail peppering
the film, a few minutes of clarification could have been devoted to rounding out
the complicated relationship between Ishmael and Hatsue. Style stymies substance throughout.
The film looks exquisite and boasts some compelling performances, but the promise of the film's beginning is not met by its deflating denouement. The trial serves as a structure for the film, but the trial only matters as an occasion to bring Ishmael and Hatsue back together, for Ishmael to decide which course he will take. Will his bitterness rule, or will his 'gentle nature' win out? That's the story, and everything else is scenery.