I just rented Snow Falling on Cedars last night. (The video store next to the Peace Corps office has over 2000 DVDs in stock.) I wasn't expecting much.

I read the book a few weeks ago and it is one of the best novels I have ever read. It's beautifully told story of forbidden love told against the backdrop of a murder trial on a small island in the Puget Sound in post-WW II America.

The author David Guterson spent 10 years reserching the book to make even the tiniest details of the time accurate, especially those dealing with relations with Japanese-Americans and the emotions around the internment camps.

Usually when a book is this deeply textured and well written, the film adaptation is a terrible disappointment. Simply too much detail of the novel has to be extracted in order to fit into the 2-hour film format demanded by the minor attention spans of most Americans.

However the film of Snow Falling on Cedars was nothing short of genius. I'm a huge fan aof movies that use flashback as a major story-telling element. Il Conformisto by Bernardo Bertolucci is about as good as it gets. That is, until this movie.

Director Scott Hicks (from Adelaide) has created a movie with a mosiac of a flashbacks, one inside the other, moving seemlessly from one character to the next so you almost don't even realize that the visions are shifting between them. The thoughts and daydreams of people are so layered and and multi-faceted it mimics in the closest way possible the manner in which people actually think. It is an incredible Tour de Force.

Added to this is a brilliant ensemble cast including Ethan Hawke, James Cromwell, Max von Sydow, and several other notable character actors. The movie is so good I'm even willing to forget that the father from the TV show ALF plays the county coroner.

If you haven't seen it, go out an rent it. If you haven't read it, go out and buy it.