Cold Mountain Review
by Richard A. Zwelling (razwee AT yahoo DOT com)December 29th, 2003
COLD MOUNTAIN
** 1/2 (out of ****)
a film review by
Richard A. Zwelling
Cold Mountain is based on the best-selling novel by Charles Frazier and provides for a visually compelling film with some powerful individual scenes, but a considerable lack of thematic coherence, engaging characterization, and genuinely involving romance.
Jude Law stars as Inman, a Confederate soldier who has a near-death experience on the battlegrounds of the Civil War and attempts a long and dangerous journey back to his town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina. Waiting at Cold Mountain is Ada (Nicole Kidman), who shared a brief tryst with Inman before his departure. The love affair they shared was brief, but powerful, and the two yearn to be together once again.
Along his journey, Inman runs into various characters in a structure that is very episodic and reminiscent of Homer's The Odyssey, although only loosely. These include cameos by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Giovanni Ribisi, Jena Malone, Natalie Portman, and most enjoyable, Aileen Atkins as an old woman in the woods who provides Inman with assistance.
While Inman is gone, Ada must attend to her father's farm, despite her inexperience with worldly tasks (she is a cultured woman much more at home in the arts and literature). Enter Renee Zellweger in a fun and deliberately over-the-top performance as Ruby, a down-to-earth, scrappy farm girl who helps Ada tend to chores while providing much needed companionship.
There are also villains, in the form of executioners who charge anyone housing "deserter" soldiers with treason. These villains, however, are two-dimensional and provide a presence that is evil, but not at all additive in the greater context of the film.
It does not help that the love story is as tepid and lukewarm as one could imagine. Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are great actors who do the best they can in these roles, but unfortunately, they do not have enough to work with to provide either identifiable character or impassioned romance. If it were not for my enthusiasm for Zellweger's performance, my rating for this film might have been lower.
Also, by the end of the film, my big question was: What was this film about? Was it a love story? Was it a historical epic? Was it a commentary on war and its effects? There are elements of all these in the film, but they are hodgepodged together without any of them coming into the forefront for more than a brief moment.
As with The English Patient, writer/director Anthony Minghella's other major war/love epic, I could admire Cold Mountain's visual beauty, but could not find myself involved with or convinced by most of the important characters. And if you don't have convincing major characters on screen, you don't have a successful cinematic narrative.
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