COLD MOUNTAIN ***˝
Cold Mountain begins with an epic battle in St. Petersburg where the Union Army commits one of the most tragic blunders ever know in military history. Within the Confederate ranks is Inman (Jude Law) who receives a near fatal wound, while trying to save the life of a friend from home. After the battle, Inman starts his long recovery in a military hospital where he gets a letter from his love back home. A volunteer reads it for him and he hears that his love is dealing with her own tragedy and only wants him to come home. After hearing this, Inman decides that after he recovers, he is going to desert and walk home. Seeing that his home at Cold Mountain is hundreds of miles away, it’s obvious that it is going to be a very long and arduous journey.
The love back home at Cold Mountain, South Carolina is Ada (Nicole Kidman), a preachers (Donald Sutherland) daughter who has been brought to the country after leading a socialites life back in Charleston. Seen through a series of flashbacks is the budding romance between Ada and Inman and the power of their love at first sight developing between them. After that, the movie splits off to tell two different tales. One is the journey of Inman and the other is Ada’s journey of independence.
Inman’s tale is somewhat like Homers
Odyssey. His journey is long and full of interesting characters played by highly recognizable stars. Most notable are Philip Seymour Hoffman and Natalie Portman. Hoffman plays a reverend with the morals of an imp and Portman plays a war widow with a newborn struggling to survive the elements, starvation, and rouge units of both armies who come to claim anything they want from her in the name of the Union or Confederate Armies. Portman’s short time on the screen is what I consider to be the films most powerful performance. I thought that Law did an excellent job as a man that is psychologically worn and often exhausted or grievously wounded. Only a couple of times did his real accent come through, most often he did just fine.
Ada’s tale is equally compelling. After her Father dies, she finds that she is ill equipped to run a farm and quickly finds herself in poverty. Through the compassion of a neighbor friend (Kathy Bates), Ruby (Renée Zellweger) is sent to teach Ada how to live on her own. Ruby is a tougher than nails type of woman who talks like a sailor and works like a lumberjack. As far as I’m concerned, Zellweger owned this movie in all respects. Every scene she was in centered around her whether or not it was even
about her. She certainly deserves at least the nomination for Best Supporting Actress this year. I don’t want to spill the beans too much about either segment because the joy is in the discovery.
Cold Mountain was directed by Anthony Minghella, based on the book by Charles Frazier. I recently read the book so as to compare the two, and found that it is indeed faithful to Frazier’s vision. Though this is a period piece about the civil war, don’t expect a lot of battles to be played out. This is more of a human-interest study than it is a war movie, though the opening sequence is one of the best battle sequences I have ever seen belonging to this genre. The scenery is beautiful to look at and the score is enriched but not overdone.
I can easily recommend this movie even though there are moments during it that are fairly predictable, and a couple of the characters (the villainous Ray Winstone most of all) appear to be from the same cut-out as many others. I can forgive it these things because it is so well acted and thought provoking throughout. I really enjoyed this film.
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