Review

Review Date: 28-December-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Cold Mountain (2003)

As I sit down to review Cold Mountain, I find on my fingertips many of the same things that I wrote about Big Fish, the subject of this week's other review. Now, this strikes me as peculiar, since Anthony Minghella (The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley) and Tim Burton (Mars Attacks!) have very different and distinctive styles. Then again, both films are constructed of a series of vignettes with a strong Southern flavor (despite the large number of non-Americans in their casts), and both films left me with a vague feeling of "so what?" But whereas Big Fish at least made me feel warmly attached to its characters, Cold Mountain only filled me with a sense of frigid beauty, as icy and static as the snowy mountains in which it was filmed.

Working from his own script, Minghella faithfully adapts Charles Frazier's award-winning novel of romance (sort of) and the ravages wrought by the Civil War. The hero, Inman (Jude Law), and heroine, Ada (Nicole Kidman), are two sides of the same coin: lonely, withdrawn souls prepared to spend their quiet lifetimes in the backwater Carolina town of Cold Mountain, where he works as a laborer and she serves as the helpmeet to her father, a preacher. During a few awkward meetings and stolen moments, Inman and Ada form an attachment, which is sealed with a kiss on the very day he marches off to join the Confederate Army. Despite their brief acquaintance, each latches onto the memory of the other as the beacon that will guide them through the hardship ahead. As Ada tries to eke out a living at home, Inman fights, almost dies, and finally deserts the army, heeding her written call to come back and save her from a world gone mad.

The bulk of the story concerns the adventures that Ada and Inman meet as they fight to keep mind, body, and spirit alive (adventures populated by a slew of recognizable actors looking, I suppose, to take a ride on Minghella's Oscar bandwagon). Inman wanders the hills and dales of the Old South (for which Romania serves as a stand-in), encountering a horny reverend (Philip Seymour Hoffman, reliably revolting), a treacherous redneck (Giovanni Ribisi), a kind old lady (Eileen Atkins), and a desperate young widow (Natalie Portman, impressive for the first time ever, probably because she owns the best part of the picture). Through it all, Inman acts bravely and kindly but fails to light any real spark of interest or affection or pity. It's unfortunate, but Law is simply too pretty for roles involving everyday mortal men, particularly one which requires him to be filthy, bloody, and flea-bitten for two and a half hours. I simply couldn't concern myself with his wounds, spiritual or physical, when faced with such obvious questions as how often he exfoliates and whether the length of his eyelashes is entirely natural. It doesn't help Law's cause, of course, that Inman is that most difficult of characters, the thoughtful man who exists within himself.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Ada very nearly starves until Ruby (Renée Zellweger), a local gal educated in the school of hard knocks, moves in and shows her how to take care of herself. The versatile Zellweger is the rare starlet who doesn't look out of place standing knee-deep in sheep shit, but somehow she never connects with the stifled pain and hard-earned wisdom that Ruby is meant to represent. Frazier and Minghella share the blame, since they set her up as an Appalachian fairy godmother — or the kind of hot-blooded mountain woman who might inhabit the reverend's gyno-erotic dreams — and never allow her to develop into a flesh-and-blood person who exists on her own instead of as a foil for somebody else. It's touching, yes, that she and Ada form such a close and sustaining sisterhood, but that is but one of the many sidebars that form the story as a whole.

Minghella is an able director unafraid to take his time and blessed with a clear eye for natural (including human) beauty; Cold Mountain never fails to offer an attractive, if occasionally brutal, showpiece. But it cannot generate emotions fit for the momentous subjects with which it deals — war, humanity, determination — and therefore leaves the viewer with scattered images, a handful of stories, and, above all, a chill.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.