Cold Mountain Review
by Robin Clifford (robin AT reelingreviews DOT com)December 12th, 2003
"Cold Mountain"
The town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina is seething with rebellious glee, in 1861, when the Confederate States of America declare war on the anti-slavery Union. This historic moment, the object of joy for most, causes nothing but pain for P.W. Inman (Jude Law) when he finds the woman, Ada Monroe, that he can loveand live with forever but must, instead, go off to war. But, when he is severely wounded in the carnage of the infamous Battle of Petersburg, he makes his way to the only place he can feel safe, "Cold Mountain."
Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella adapts the National Book Award winning novel by Charles Frazier and brings to the screen a love story that is also about courage, loyalty, revenge and the dangerous world of a country near the end of a crushing civil war.
Beautiful, spoiled Ada has moved to rural Cold Mountain with her preacher father (Donald Sutherland) from her genteel life in Virginia. She spies a handsome young man, Inman, and figures out a way to meet him. Immediately, they are both smitten and a budding romance begins but the herald of war will tear them and their newborn love apart. Inman looks back from the sea of gray uniforms for one last look at his love.
Jump ahead to 1864 and the months long siege at Petersburg, Virginia is about to, quite literally, blow apart when Union troops dig a 586-foot tunnel directly under the Confederate trenches and pack the mine with explosives. The ensuing blast rips through the rebel line and creates a crater spanning 130 feet. The Yankee troops, not the ones trained for this attack, flood into the crater and can't escape. The rebel troops begin a slaughter that will take the lives of 4000 Union soldiers with a loss of 1000 of their own. Inman is one of those wounded in the battle, shot through the neck and, when he can walk, packs up and walks away from the army, heading home. Along the way he meets a bevy of remarkable people - some good and some very bad.
Back home, Ada suffers a tragic loss when her father suddenly dies. Rev. Monroe was not very good with money and Ada has never had to fend for herself. As the war drags on, she scrabbles to survive, even grubbing for potatoes in the frozen ground. Until, one day, when a smart, capable, outspoken drifter, Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger), shows up and tells Ada that she's there to help. Ada begins a journey to a place where she sheds her past helplessness and becomes an able, self-reliant woman.
Inman is the Civil War equivalent of Homer's Odysseus as he treks across a land bled dry by the ravages of the war. He alternately meets people who offer him kindness, food and care and others who get him drunk in order to collect the bounty imposed on deserters. This is where "Cold Mountain" loses the flow of the book and, instead, provides short episodes that bring in all manner of characters. He falls upon the doorstep of a healer who nurses him back to health. He teams up, for a short time, with a fallen preacher named Veasey (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is obsessed, alternately, with hedonistic pleasure and the state of his bowels. They are betrayed by Junior (Giovanni Rabisi), a ribald moonshiner who uses his wife and her sister to seduce deserters, drug them and turn them over to the Home Guard.
After escaping the chain gang, Inman falls upon the home of Sara, a frantic, lonely young woman with a very sick baby and a husband far away at war. She takes him into her home and even seeks chaste comfort in his arms. He saves her from the lustful clutches of renegade Yankee soldiers on a looting spree and continues on his way.
Back at the home front, Ada resists the attention of Teague (Ray Winstone), the head of the local home guard and a martinet who uses his legal power for his own gain. Then, a blast out of Ruby's past shows up in the form of her long estranged father, Stobrod (Brendan Gleeson), a happy go luck fiddler who shirks any real responsibility. He and his good-natured but dim partner Pangle (Ethan Suplee) are being hunted by Teague and his killer henchman, Bosie (Charlie Hunnman), exercising vigilante justice whenever they want.
These physical and symbolic journeys come to a head when Inman and Ada get together once again after years apart. Their reunion is steeped in hope and tragedy.
Jude Law never gets beyond two dimensions in his depiction of Inman. The man is soft spoken and humble and wants nothing more to return home and hold the woman he has loved, unrequited, for years. But Law is a bit too taciturn and I never embrace the emotions of his character. Nicole Kidman has the ethereal beauty (captured lovingly by lenser John Seale) of Ada but she, too, fails to give much dimension to the woman.
Renee Zellweger gives a solid, articulated performance as the feisty, capable Ruby. She comes on like gangbusters and does not let up once. With her ever-updating list of rules, she helps educate Ada in worldlier and less academic ways but also shows herself to be intelligent, too. I would put the actress on the short list for support attention.
The plethora of character actors playing mostly cameo roles is an embarrassment of riches. From veteran thespians Donald Sutherland, Kathy Baker, James Gammon, Ray Winstone and Brendan Gleeson to a gaggle of young actors like Natalie Portman, Eileen Atkins, Charlie Hunnman and Jena Malone, "Cold Mountain" does not lack for talent. The episodic nature of the film never really allows any of the characters to develop into anything substantial, though.
Techs are good with Seale doing an exemplary job overall and, in particular, with the Battle of the Crater sequence. Costume designer Ann Roth recreates the look of the period dress from the genteel elegance of silk skirts and flowered bonnets to the rough spun clothes of the rebel troops and the blue serge uniforms of the Union soldiers. Production design, staged primarily in Romania under the guidance of oft Oscar nominated Dante Ferretti, gives the film a realistic look though the privations suffered at the home front are glossed over in favor of building Ada's character.
I was quite taken with Charles Frazier's introspective look at life during the Civil War and the individual will to survive. I fell into Inman's journey as he trekked along to his ultimate destiny. Anthony Minghella changed the story into a series of vignettes showing good people as good and bad people as bad with little shading. It is a rich looking film with a wonderful performance by Renee Zellweger. I give it a B-.
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