*** (out of ****)
Starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Reneé Zellweger, Brendan Gleeson, Eileen Atkins, Ray Winstone, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kathy Baker, Giovanni Ribisi, and Lucas Black
Directed & written by Anthony Minghella, from the novel by Charles Frazier
2003
155 min R
In an earlier review, I made a quick list of things there will always be movies about, including vampires, infidelity, and war. Stories about the American Civil War will always be especially interesting because they give our nation a chance to see its neuroses come to a head. In the Civil War we can see ourselves as both invader and invaded, soulless industrialists and religiously self-righteous, cramped urbanites and rural farmers. Both sides were convinced they were fighting God’s cause—but one if not both of them had to be wrong.
“Cold Mountain” sees this enigma from three perspectives, all of them dirty, gritty, and mostly satisfied with avoiding the Big Questions of capital-W War. We see the plight of the soldier in conflict, we see the struggles of those left behind, and we see the debauchery of a ravaged land in turmoil. The movie sidesteps the issue of slavery in the way that many rural Southerners who almost never saw slaves, to say nothing of owning them, must have had mixed, incomplete feelings about that whole mess as well.
We see the war through the eyes of Inman (Jude Law), a carpenter-turned-Confederate soldier who has had enough. And we know why he has enough and decides to go home, after we see his neck perforated in a muddy bloodbath in which thousands of soldiers from both sides are trapped in freshly made craters, stabbing, shooting, and trampling each other. The plight of the homefront, of all invaded lands, is suffered by Ada (Nicole Kidman), the woman Inman left behind. A big-city Southern belle, Ada finds herself alone on a Southern plantation, where her skills in embroidering, piano playing, and civilization are useless in the face of starvation, cold, and dwindling armies that have taken everything. The debauchery of a land gone wild is seen by both of them, who must suffer the injustices of the “home guard,” which decides whether deserters, runaway slaves, and those who abet them should be killed or captured on a minute-by-minute basis.
The novel “Cold Mountain,” by Charles Frazier, has been compared to “The Odyssey,” and rightly so. Inman’s trek from the front back to his home at Cold Mountain is marked by tangents that include sirens, widows, a crooked preacher (an appropriate-yet-goofy Philip Seymour Hoffman), and bloody encounters with the home guard. Ada, who is not so much proud as awkward around those with less money than her, struggles for a time before being joined on her plantation by a local woman named Ruby (Reneé Zellweger) who knows how to run a farm. Zellweger, whom Richard Roeper more-or-less describes as “stomping around for her Oscar,” plays Ruby as a loud and bossy firecracker, relishing the chance to show up the spoiled rich girl, yet willing to form a subtly strong bond with Ada. Ruby’s father (Brendan Gleeson of “The General” and “Gangs of New York”) is a drunken lout redeemed through new found musical skills. All are harassed by the power-hungry bullies of the home guard, led by Ray Winstone (“Sexy Beast”) and aided by a sickly thug played by Charlie Hunnam, in a performance as hateful as his “Nicholas Nickleby” was likable.
Page two of "Cold Mountain." Back to home.