Cold Mountain, author Charles Frazier's 1997 award-winning novel, is a difficult book. No two ways about it folks, reading it is as long and arduous a journey as the one Inman (the book's main character) undertakes when he treks 300 miles through woods, swamps, and various manifestations of hell to return to his lovely Ada. Enter writer/director Anthony Minghella, who has shown a genuine talent for adapting lengthy, literate novels into solid films (visit the library and just try reading The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient without falling asleep). Unlike the approach most screenwriters might take, Minghella chose to preserve rather than cut back on Cold Mountain's literary structure, plastering it onto the screen in a sublimely moving and exquisite film.
Cold Mountain is one part Odyssey, one part Frazier family history (though the author has never elaborated on just how much of the book is true), and one part western. The film opens towards the end of the Civil War with the battle of Petersberg, just about the time when the South realizes that they are going to lose. Trying to blow a hole in the middle of the Southern trench defenses, the Union troops dig an underground shaft and fill it with dynamite. The resulting explosion is so large that the entire Union force at Petersberg is trapped in a giant crater and slaughtered like fish in a barrel by the Confederates. Wounded Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law) is carried off to a hospital in Virginia to recover from the hole that has been blown into his neck.
Deserting the army, Inman begins the long trek to his hometown of Cold Mountain, North Carolina to meet up with his beautiful sweetheart Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman).
Ada's life is no less difficult. With the town bereft of all its young men and the death of Ada's father, the Rev. Monroe (Donald Sutherland), there is no one left to tend Black Cove, Ada's farm. Though an accomplished pianist and educated in fine works of literature, Ada can't tell a rooster from a chicken, and her farm falls into disrepair.
To help with the work, neighbor Sally Swanger (Kathy Baker) sends Ada the tough-as-nails mountain girl Ruby Thewes (Renèe Zellweger). When Ruby arrives at Black Cove, she introduces herself by barking orders at Ada who begins to comply before she spies a rooster that has been tormenting her. Jumping back in fear, Ada proclaims the rooster to be "Lucifer himself." Shrugging, Ruby quickly clomps over to the rooster, gives its neck a short jerk with her bare hands, and rips its head off. "We'll put it in a pot," she tells the horrified Ada. Under Ruby's gruff guidance, Ada quickly grows to become farm-savvy.
Ada matures under the uncomfortably tight watch of Teague, the leader of the Home Guard, a self-appointed Southern militia that has taken to murdering deserters and torturing anyone who opposes them. Teague is not a great fan of Inman because he has set his own sights on Ada, and the frightening gun battle that ensues between Inman and the Home Guard upon the deserter's return is painful, exciting, and inevitably tragic.
Cold Mountain is love story that is old-fashioned in its sensibility. Aside from a few hurried glances, some sparse altercations, and a single, passionate kiss (probably the best on-screen kiss since Gone With The Wind), Ada and Inman spend much of the movie apart. They barely know each other, but that tentative hope of love between them is enough to keep them both alive. Minghella handles their relationship with subtlety and finesse, particularly when they are reunited after four years apart. There is no tearful reunion, no passionate embrace; Inman and Ada meet as any couple who had been separated and brutally changed by war for four years would – like total strangers.
Every step of Ada and Ruby's journey is absorbing and felicitous. Inman's plight is less so. His experiences are weighed down by the unnecessary introduction of a promiscuous reverend (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a nomadic gypsy who raises goats (Eileen Atkins).
The only interlude in Inman's adventures that is very touching and poignant is the night he spends with a young, widowed mother named Sara (Natalie Portman). Sara finds Inman to be a curious and compassionate man, much the same as her husband in size and appearance. "Would you do something for me?" she asks quietly. "Would you lie here in this bed with me? No need to go further than that." Sara has been alone for so long that she needs someone to hold her just for one night. Portman and Law are spectacular in their short time together, and it is the saddest, most wonderful scene in the film.
Minghella has made a picture that is utterly grown up in style and composition in a business that panders to teenage audiences. Cold Mountain is just the sort of stirring, old-fashioned cinematic narrative that The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient always wanted to be but never could. Still, the director does divulge in a few Hollywood moments; the gore in the battle scenes and the "heavy-breathing" in the sex scenes are a bit excessive.
Cold Mountain should clean up at this year's Golden Globes, thanks in no small part to its principal actors. Though he says only a few sentences in the entire film, Law should win the prize for Best Actor. Likewise, Zellweger faces no competition in the supporting actress category and will definitely squeeze out an Oscar nomination (if not a win) for her airtight portrayal of Ruby as a little bull full of fury and resolve. Kidman was good but nothing special, and it didn't help any that Zellweger stole every single scene she was in. In a perfect world, Portman would have also been nominated for her touching role.
Cold Mountain is the best movie you'll see all year and probably for many years to come. In a year when big-budget action vehicles look set to steal audiences and Oscars – Master And Commander, The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, and The Last Samurai – Cold Mountain offers everything that makes movies truly wonderful: a stellar cast led by Zellweger and Law, a literate and moving script, and one director who should see his name up there with the likes of Capra, Spielberg, and Huston very soon.
John Visclosky. John Visclosky is, suffice it to say, "hardly the sharpest intellectual tool in the shed," which is why he has stupidly chosen to here address himself in the third person. He's a mellow sort of guy who enjoys movies and sharing his feelings and innermost … More »
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