Snow Falling on Cedars

Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) is Scott Hicks' drama you can watch online on iFILM. On a quiet fishing island in the Pacific Northwest, early 1950s, a local fisherman turns up dead, tangled in his own nets.

A Japanese-American man, Kazuo, is charged with the killing, and in the courtroom sits reporter Ishmael Chambers, who once loved the accused man's wife and has never quite let her go. As the trial drags on, the island's memory surfaces: prewar neighbours, the internment camps that followed Pearl Harbor, the racial grudges everyone preferred to ignore.

Adapted from David Guterson's bestseller, the film runs on mood rather than mystery — Robert Richardson shoots snow, fog and sea until the landscape weighs heavier than the evidence, camerawork that picked up an Oscar nod. Ethan Hawke, Yuki Kudoh and a quietly commanding Max von Sydow as the defense lawyer round out the cast. Slow, beautiful and melancholy, it's a study of guilt and prejudice. Stream Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) online on iFILM.