Fifteen minutes into this movie and I was starting to get a sinking feeling. This was reportedly two and a half hours long and I was already starting to have serious doubts about the film’s romantic leads. Not only was I not feeling any sort of chemistry between these characters but their rare conversations were loaded with such dreadful dialogue as can hardly be imagined. People only talk like this in the minds of writers who are attached to some romantic notion of the Old South.
I’m getting ahead of myself. The sinking feeling started quickly, that’s true, but it doesn’t tell the story. Cold Mountain, based on the novel by Charles Frazier, is the Odyssey set in the south during the Civil War. W.P. Inman (Jude Law) and Ada Munroe (Nicole Kidman), are starting a romance in a very slow manner. He speaks little and she comes from a big city to the little town of Cold Mountain and thus never knows how to act. We know he’s interested in her because a neighbor says so. You’d never know it from watching him. They flirt a bit, sort of, and eventually he goes off to war. They exchange photos and a blistering kiss and that’s the whole relationship. This is all intercut with scenes from three years down the road where Inman is about to take part in a major battle.
He is badly wounded and ends up in a hospital where he gets a letter from Ada begging him to come home. Her father has died, the servants are gone and she has no idea how to care for herself. She thinks of him as her savior. In her he finds the objective he needs to pull himself out of his current situation. Basically they become each other’s life preservers for the soul.
Ada seems likely to starve to death but the neighbors dispatch Ruby (Renee Zellwegger) to help her out. Ruby is a hard bitten straight shooting woman who works as hard as any man. She quickly sets about putting Aida’s estate back in working order and Aida as well. Meanwhile, Inman runs away from the Confederate army to be with Aida.
Now, their early courtship was the part that caused me pain. There was no spark and the dialogue was heavily stilted and phony. Basically, the two leads were bores. But then comes a charming performance by James Gammon that added some much needed personality to the film. A little later Renee Zellwegger appears and gives the entire film a serious jolt of energy. It’s almost as if the writers (I have not read the novel so I don’t know whether to credit writer/director Anthony Minghella or Frazier) knew that Ada and Inman were painfully dull and wrote Ruby specifically as an antidote. But as the film progresses, it becomes obvious that it lives and dies with the supporting characters.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is very entertaining as a philandering minister, Natalie Portman is great as a grieving widow of a slain soldier, Brendan Gleeson is excellent as a musician deserter and Aileen Atkins is fascinating as the goat woman. All these small roles give the movie life, succeeding in carrying the story of what was happening to the South during the Civil War far better than the leads. We simply don’t care much about the leads, which would kill most movies. This one is able remain of interest almost entirely on the strength of the supporting cast.
Renee Zellwegger is the stand out here. She absolutely commands the screen every time she appears and has a brilliant way of using her character to puncture the overblown romance between Ada and Inman. Zellwegger contributes astounding levels of charm and energy, getting great mileage out of Ruby’s homespun sayings.
John Seale’s cinematography is excellent. He utilizes the Romanian countryside to great effect in portraying 19th century North Carolina. The beauty of his work is that it gives real feeling to the elements. You can almost feel how cold, wet and miserable Inman often is during his journey.
This is definitely a flawed film. It is too long, suffers structural problems and lacks romantic sizzle. Despite all that, it thrives in the secondary characters, creating a series of small stories that together build a fascinating view of life in the South during the Civil War. Coming out of the film, I wasn’t thinking about how awful it was (unlike Minghella’s The English Patient) but instead was wondering about Minghella’s obsession with impassive male lead characters. That character in The English Patient was a miserable unemotional jerk. That character in The Talented Mr. Ripley hid behind masks he created to achieve his goals whole hiding his own personality. And then there is Inman, a guy who does a bit of crying but mostly spends the movie looking shell-shocked. These sorts of characters tend to drive me nuts. I can’t relate to them and begin to look forward to the point where I don’t have to look at them any longer.
So ignore my personal pet peeves and go check out a movie with all the good stuff going on in the background. The stuff in the foreground isn’t a thrill but at least Nicole Kidman is gorgeous. That tends to ease the pain quite a bit.
- John Shea
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