Cold Mountain Review
by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)January 5th, 2004
Cold Mountain
by Ryan Ellis
December 29, 2003
Got insomnia? Anxious for a cure? 'Cold Mountain' awaits you and your holiday money. For anyone looking for either a good time at the movies or an emotional experience, go see something else. This is a 150-minute snooze. Trouble is, fans of the pretty stars decorating the poster and/or saps who fall for Miramax "art" films that come out this time of year are already making this film a success. I wonder if those same folks felt as I did--expecting romance, action, drama, beauty, and a little bit of comedy. The film IS funnier than it has a right to be, but those other qualities are hard to spot in this epic bore. Oh sure, this picture tries to be romantic and dramatic, but it all rings alarmingly false. I felt totally detached from minute one of this big dull dud.
With superstars Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, and Renee Zellwegger on the marquee, the ingredients were there for a top-notch motion picture. Writer/director Anthony Minghella hasn't released a film since 1999's 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' (a more-compelling effort than this one, with some interesting sexual and moral quandries going on), but this 5th feature of his is not without its pluses. His casting, for one, is okay (even if he has no idea what to do with the actors once they're in the movie). Along with the 3 main stars, Minghella wastes Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brendan Gleeson, Natalie Portman, and Ray Winstone (Ben Kingsley's target in 'Sexy Beast'). None of them leave much of a mark, even if Hoffman is goofy, Gleeson is charming, and Winstone is devilish. In fact, nothing significant resonates here. The reunion in the final 30 minutes of the picture should be huge, a Spielbergian climax with big music and huge hugs. Even THAT is muted and tired. The only one with any life is Zellwegger, who's getting raves for her humorous self-aware performance. Kidman finally disappoints after a string of risky choices such as the overlooked 'To Die For', the chilling 'The Others' and the overrated 'The Hours'. Law looks even more bored than I was, except when he seems too exhausted to bother acting.
But I should skim over the plot before anything further is said. The film is based on Charles Frazier's novel, which we're to assume indicates this will be a classy, meaningful production. The story plunges into the final days of the American Civil War where Confederate soldier Inman (Law) is wounded in battle. He basically says "to hell with this" and splits. See, this girl he knew for 4 seconds back in the eponymous town in North Carolina is real purty and he thinks he loves her. Plus, she's Nicole Kidman...I mean, Ada Munroe, and she's already got a farm that her dead daddy has left behind by conveniently dying. The dead daddy is Sutherland, just as intriguing and soulful here as he was in 'The Italian Job'. He's bumped off in this picture at about the same time as in 'Job', but it bugs me that Minghella seems to have no qualms about offing such a fine actor with a cheap and telegraphed death scene. But, you see, Kidman couldn't play Scarlett O'Hara if her pop was getting in the way. She stops short of standing in silhouette under a tree and shouting "as God is my witness...", but the effort to emulate 'Gone With The Wind' is obvious. Anyway, she lets her home go to ruin by spending every second writing letters to Inman (of which he receives only three...not great mail service back in those days, I guess) while he has a Huck Finn adventure on his way home. Out of thin air comes Zellwegger's Ruby Thewes, who is as tough as any man and as witty as a stand-up comic with a specialty for throw-away one-liners. Ruby becomes Ada's friend/sister/co-worker and helps her clean up the farm, all the while cutting through Ada's "I miss him/love him/need him" bullshit.
That's essentially the story. Inman is fed up with the war, both because he misses Ada and because he never believed in it in the first place. Interesting subtext when another war happening right now has so many people questioning its purpose. I'm sure the soldiers in Iraq just want to get back to their loved ones too. Is the movie trying to be political or am I looking for something that isn't there? Either way, it's not easy to have a lot of faith in a deserter. Just as Minghella gave us a love story about a Nazi in World War II with 'The English Patient', he's daring the audience to give a hoot about a scoundrel. And since he deserted, he's bound to be shot if captured. I'm anti-war in general, so this isn't a big issue for me. After all, if you can quit other jobs, why can't you quit the army? But Winstone's villainous Teague is out to round up and summarily execute deserters, which barbaric as it may be is pretty much the way military organizations have always operated. Should we hate Teague for doing his job and doing it well? Besides, are we really supposed to be appalled by his actions when there are 3 or 4 brutal acts of violence towards animals in this picture? Chickens heads get twisted off as a punchline (although I'll admit it WAS funny), goats get casually stabbed in the brain, and dead cows are sawed into equal sections for efficient transport. The movie surely didn't kill any live animals, but I can't see that pet lovers will be weeping over the lost love of the main characters the way we're supposed to when all these critters are being slaughtered. That's probably accurate to the hard times of this era, but there's a glaring oversight if we're going to talk about accuracy in the mid-1900s. How can you have a Civil War film with no blacks? This was like an episode of 'Friends'. Only whites allowed, save for a few brief shots here and there. Talk about revisionist history!
Law is a pretty-good actor, but he made an odd choice to play this character in Gary Cooper "do nothing" mode. That can work if you're the star of 'High Noon', but it does little for 'Cold Mountain's laboriousness that the male lead is so dull. Law is upstaged along his journey by Hoffman's amoral preacher, who elicits some giggles before his all-too-quick death. Natalie Portman gets out of George Lucas' blue-screen purgatory for a while to take in the wandering Inman for about half a day. For her trouble, her baby is left outside to nearly freeze to death, she's almost raped by Union soldiers, and then she's written out of the story without so much as a thanks for showing up. Perhaps she missed the blue screen, after all... Inman leaves her farm and finally, after what must have seemed like years to him (it sure seemed like years to me) gets back to Cold Mountain. And here's the big moment. Call this a spoiler and stop reading if you must, but how could a director blow his most important scene? The whole film is about Inman's hazardous trip home to Ada and her struggle to keep that home together. When they meet again, it's flat. They hardly knew each other to begin with and neither one seems all that happy to see the other. As I said before, Spielberg would've hit a grand slam with this scene. Even Ron Howard or Robert Zemeckis might have yanked tears right out of my ducts, but Minghella makes it perfunctory and meaningless.
Since Miramax gave a green light to an $83 million prestige picture and are only releasing it in late-December for one reason (hello Mr. Oscar, can we buy you again?), they must have confidence that this is their finest film of the year. It's not ('Kill Bill' is far better) and it's also one of the lesser-lights on the resumes of all the big names involved. Law's charisma and charm from 'A.I.' and 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' are absent, Kidman's beauty shines through but little of her pure talent does, and Minghella's direction weaves nothing together. Even with John Seale's pretty photography, Dante Ferretti's ramshackle sets, and Walter Murch working away in the editing room (although not cutting scenes with proper rhythym or pacing), Minghella doesn't utilize their skills well enough to augment his own lifelessness at the helm. He's a sensible director and since he takes 3 or 4 years between projects, I assume he carefully shapes his films like an auteur. I applaud the sense of humour embodied by Zellwegger and Hoffman (too often such Oscar-bait epics wouldn't DARE laugh at themselves), but I still didn't care about these people. They're pretty to look at, even when slumming it to look ugly for Oscar (although their "ugly" is still pretty damn beautiful). My intelligence wasn't insulted, but my interest wasn't piqued either. Maybe I'll cough up money for another ticket if I'm having a hard time sleeping in the next month. A few hours of 'Cold Mountain' will put me out like a holy baby laying in a manger.
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