In theaters

EAST-WEST (in French and Russian, with English subtitles), directed by Regis Wargnier, written by Roustam Ibraguimbek, Serguei Bodrov, Louis Gardel and Wargnier. Running time: 120 minutes. Rated PG-13. Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Murder, hope, love and betrayal come together seamlessly in Regis Wargnier’s “East-West,” a moving, haunting and ultimately harrowing film about Stalinism that captures the mood of a time and the lives of a people.

One of this year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Film (it lost to Pedro Almodovar’s “All About My Mother”), “East-West” is filled with all the drama and disillusionment one would expect from a film examining the iron fist of Stalinism, but it wisely never gives itself over to moments of ripe melodrama or staunch politicizing.

It’s backed by a director and writers who acknowledge Stalin’s evil, while also recognizing that those who followed him weren’t necessarily evil. The result is a film layered with uncommon emotional complexity, the human landscape examined with a clarity only the passing of time can offer.

The film opens in 1946 France at the end of World War II with Josef Stalin opening his arms to Russian exiles, those expatriates living away who were invited back to the Motherland to help rebuild her after the ravages of war.

“We love you, we need you, so please come home” was Stalin’s message, which thousands of homesick men and women took to heart and, sadly, to their graves.

Indeed, as Aleksei Golovine (Oleg Menchikov), his French wife, Marie (Sandrine Bonnaire), and their son, Serioja (Ruben Tapiero at 7 and Erwan Baynaud at 14), learn almost immediately upon re-entering Aleksei’s native homeland, Stalin’s message was a cruel hoax. Even before they set foot on the docks at Odessa, the family witnesses the grisly execution of a fellow passenger gunned down for having second thoughts about repatriation.

With Catherine Deneuve and Serguei Bodrov Jr. terrific in key supporting roles, “East-West” mounts a satisfying, daring plot to get the Golovines out of Russia and back West to freedom.

Who makes it out, who stays under Communist rule, who lives and who dies won’t be revealed here, but know this: The film’s last 30 minutes are so genuinely tense and unnerving, they linger — like the best films do — in the mind long after the screen fades to black. Grade: A-

On video

SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS, directed by Scott Hicks, written by Ron Bass and Hicks, based on the novel by David Guterson. Running time: 130 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Capturing the essence of a complexly layered, multifarious novel and bringing it to screen is one thing, but presenting a literal interpretation of the text is something altogether different, especially when that text is as rooted in flashbacks as is David Guterson’s best-selling novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

Anthony Minghella did the job right in 1996. When he translated Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient” for the screen, he cut through the novel’s deeply internal landscape and labyrinthine plot to find the core of the novel’s story, which he told through rich, stunning visuals that perfectly reflected Ondaatje’s poetic use of language.

The streamlining of Ondaatje’s text and the reworking of his ideas wasn’t meant to disrespect the author; Minghella simply knows that film is its own medium, one that has its own rules of what works and what doesn’t.

In “Snow Falling on Cedars,” Scott Hicks, the director of “Shine,” doesn’t fare so well. His film — as beautifully shot and as well-acted as it is by Ethan Hawke, Max Von Sydow, James Cromwell and Youki Kudoh — is a mess of intricate flashbacks within flashbacks, and memories within memories, that take the audience out of the moment and straight into the cinematic equivalent of an acid trip.

Instead of focusing on the novel’s central story — a rural, Japanese American (Rick Yune) on trial for the alleged murder of a white man nine years after the attack on Pearl Harbor — he wants to focus on all the novel’s ideas, themes and subplots. Unless you’re incredibly gifted, you just can’t do that on film without bogging down the pace, undermining character development and exhausting the audience, which is precisely what happens here.

What’s worse is that “Snow Falling on Cedars,” which is every bit as pretentious as its title, doesn’t trust its audience. Indeed, it’s about as subtle as body odor when slamming home its themes of prejudice, humanity, decency and fear.

If those themes seemed more carefully balanced in the book, it’s not only because they were, but also because the book didn’t have James Newton Howard’s thunderous score punctuating them with 10,000 screaming violins.

Grade: C

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, Tuesday and Thursday on WLBZ’s “NEWS CENTER 5:30 Today” and “NEWS CENTER Tonight,” and Saturday and Sunday on NEWS CENTER’s statewide “Morning Report.”