moonspinner55 Review of Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain (2003)

Civil War drama has epic grandeur, and yet it's a curiously draining experience...

[5/10 · 25 November 2007]

In 1860s North Carolina, the daughter of a recently-deceased reverend awaits a handsome carpenter's return from war, unaware that he was wounded after several violent battles with the Yankees and deserted his troop; meanwhile, with no means of support, she takes in a female ranch-hand to help transpose her bedraggled farm. Director Anthony Minghella, who also adapted the screenplay from Charles Frazier's book, shows a masterly tableaux feel for wartime savagery, and his openings moments of battle are vivid, acrid, and powerful. The unconsummated love story between Nicole Kidman and Jude Law doesn't work as well, mainly due to the past-and-present story structure but also because of the casting, which fails to come off. Kidman seems too womanly for this role--too alert and capable and grown-up--so it doesn't quite wash (in the dramatic sense) for her to be pining after a young man after just one goodbye kiss (and why did she pick him in the first place? We've already been told she could have any man she wanted). Meanwhile, Law, whose haunted stare gets possibly too much screen-time, is an odd choice to play a Southern American left alienated by wartime, but Renée Zellweger gives the movie a little kick (Zellweger comes into the picture at just the right time and, though her accent doesn't completely convince, her big spirit enlivens the proceedings). Minghella treats this scenario with great care, and he triumphs with small, individual scenes (such as the slaves hiding in the cornfield with their basket of eggs, the rotting corncobs on the stalk, the drift of the first winter snow). The filmmaker tends to lose his way with the extraneous story threads, such as one involving a preacher who's about to kill a slave because "she's got my bastard in her belly!", one of the many howlers in the script which land with a clatter. "Cold Mountain" is a both forthright and shameless; its many peaks and valleys do include some good scenes, and yet the 154mn runtime is self-defeating. ** from ****