Cold Mountain Review
by David N. Butterworth (dnb AT dca DOT net)January 27th, 2004
COLD MOUNTAIN
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2004 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
As with his previous literary adaptations of Highsmith and Ondaatje, director
Anthony Minghella spends most of his time and energies getting Charles Frazier's
1997 bestseller "Cold Mountain" to look right. In so doing, however, he fails to focus on what should have made this ambitious motion picture special, the relationship between its central characters. The underlying problem is that there isn't much of a relationship to begin with, since Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Inman (Jude Law) barely know each other at the outset and spend much of the film's cramp-inducing 155 minutes separated by that little inconvenience known as the American Civil War. Inman, a carpenter, heads off to battle shortly
after falling for Ada Monroe, who has recently relocated to the blue ridges of Cold Mountain, North Carolina with her ailing father. After Inman's company
is blown apart at Petersburg, the fatally disillusioned soldier deserts his post and heads home to his love, her letters and photograph clutched to his breast. In the mean time Ada's preacher pappy dies so Ruby Thewes, a no nonsense-y
outdoors-y type played by the resilient Renée Zellweger, is sent to help out, teaching her prim and proper neighbor how to get down and dirty on the farm (although for some reason Ms. Kidman never looks anything less than immaculate in her ruffled skirts and fancy, buttoned down bootstraps). Realizing early on that its leads are burdened by long periods of separation anxiety, this episodic
film flavors the pot with an assortment of supporting players who turn the proceedings
into a risible Hollywood cattle call--"Look, there's Philip Seymour Hoffman! And Giovanni Ribisi! And Natalie Portman!" "Cold Mountain" is meticulously detailed and handsomely crafted but it cries "Epic!" early on and never really lives up to that promise. It's a grandiose romance without, alas, very much romance.
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David N. Butterworth
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