Il prezzo della vita

I saw this when it premiered and just re-watched it on IFC again. This is a great telling of the many possible stories about the immigrant farmworker population that came to Hawai'i to work the sugar plantations in the early 1900's. My grandparents were part of that migration; my parents were born on a Kohala plantation (Big Island) at the time setting of the movie. I moved to the Big Island over a year ago after living in California for over 30 years. I was surprised to see that many of the former cane growing lands are still undeveloped, with wild cane still growing, years after the plantations closed. I've heard many stories from my aunts and uncles who were kids growing up on the plantation. This movie helps to image those kinds of stories and memories. This story is more of an historical document than a romantic plot-driven movie. It leaves me shaking my head to read a review like ccthemovieman's. Some people just don't get it.

I didn't recall that Youki Kudoh had the starring role, with which she did an incredible job. I recall her great performances in Jim Jarmusch's "Mystery Train" and in an Australian film, co- starring with Russell Crowe, "Heaven's Burning". Tamlyn Tomita did a great job with her pidgin English, especially for someone who didn't grow up in the Islands. I had forgotten that Toshiro Mifune had a cameo role as the moving picture show narrator. And I missed the fact that Jason Scott Lee had an uncredited, non-speaking part as one of the plantation workers during the payday scene.

I was saddened to find out that the director and co-writer, Kayo Hatta, died in an accidental drowning in 2005.

There are two other excellent foreign films that mirror this cane plantation experience: "Gaijin" about the immigrant cane workers in Brazil (many of them Japanese) in the same time period; and "Sugar Cane Alley" about the cane plantation experience in Africa. The latter is still available, but "Gaijin", sadly, doesn't appear to have been shown in quite a while. Another great film about the early Asian in America experience when immigrants were more like slaves is "A Thousand Pieces of Gold". This was set over the Chinese workers' involvement in the building of the railroad, starred Rosalind Chao, Chris Cooper, Michael Paul Chan, and Dennis Dun.

For a mature man, to admit that he shed a tear over this film is a mature response, to a mature film.

If one need admit more then perhaps one could say that, "Life" can never be the same, after viewing such advent for it has moved us to the next level.

Good historical drama which is very educational and also very entertaining to people who like history.Very good acting and script.Not as sensual and sexy as it is sometimes marketed,be prepared to peek into the pioneer spirit and human ability to adjust.Very touching as well for the spiritually mature. Not for people who do not like to think......

The first time I saw PICTURE BRIDE, I felt a bit let down, feeling the story was a bit commonplace. Also, being from Hawaii, I felt the petty impulse to begrudge the few (very few) slightly misleading geographical and historical moments in the film. Now, five years later, I like the movie better. Its cinematography is beautiful, and if the plot is sometimes predictable, it's still handled sensitively. The film leaves you with a strong sense of a time and setting that no longer exists.

Picture Bride paints a realistic and moving portrait of what it must have been like for Japanese men brought to Hawaii at the turn of the 19th Century to work in the sugar cane fields. Most came planning to return to their homeland, but few were ever able to do so. Equally movingly portrayed is the fate of Japanese women, some as young as fifteen or sixteen, who were sent as promised brides to men they knew only through photographs that often were 10 or 15-years out of date, or were of some other younger man. They too worked long hard hours in the fields, while fighting homesickness and to preserve their dignity.

Director Hatta's portrayal of one picture bride's courage and perseverance struggling to survive in a strange land and alien society under great physical duress, is, ultimately, inspirational and uplifting--a story of moral and cultural survival. There is a grandness and magnificence of sweep of character and landscape in Picture Bride that captures the alluring beauty as well as violent harshness of colonial Hawaii. This is a film that is emotionally, intellectually and artistically rewarding.