Dir. Anthony Minghella, 2003, US, 153 mins
Cast: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Donald Sutherland, Ray Winstone
With Cold Mountain, director Anthony Minghella must surely have positioned himself as the supreme teller of epic love stories - deep, soul-searching tales, beset with tragedy against vast, visually stunning backdrops. In a trajectory that began with the gentle and moving Truly, Madly, Deeply, followed by the dusky deserts of the The English Patient, this latest film - an adaptation of a well-loved Charles Frazier novel - sees him set to pick up the mantle from the late, great David Lean.
Ada (Kidman) is a southern belle, raised to "arrange flowers but not grow them". The beloved daughter of Reverend Monroe (Sutherland), she arrives at Cold Mountain an item of curiosity to the local townsfolk. With her silken dresses and trailing scarves she appears exotic and doll-like. However, Ada is more like an innocent, fragile yet good-natured child. When she falls for a local worker, Inman (Law) she displays all the coquettishness of a giggling teenager. Barely a glance passes between the two, a touch of a hand, a whispered word, yet both are aware of the deep feelings between them. It is only when it is time for Inman to join the confederate army in the Civil War that emotions are brought to the surface. Even then, with the threat of separation - perhaps forever - looming over them, they merely acknowledge this mutual understanding. "Look at the sky", says Inman, "what colour is it? What do you call that?" Some things are so profound and beautiful that they don't need words - their existence alone is enough.
The battle scenes are a violent juxtaposition beside the crisp pastoral of the natural beauty of the mountain. The camera is placed deep within the action, with crowds of noisy soldiers scrambling across the dirty, smoke-filled greyness of the battleground. Minghella never flinches from showing a hand being crunched beneath a boot as the men scramble for survival, the crushed bodies when an attack goes wrong, or the crimson blood oozing into mud-filled puddles. Minghella himself likens the film to a modern-day version of Homer's Odyssey, a journey for Inman that is brimming with obstacles, and here is the first - that of sheer, physical survival.
Ada, meanwhile, faces her own more personal journey. Following the death of her father and having released her slaves, the dainty Ada struggles mentally and physically to cope with life on the farm. She is almost at breaking point when salvation arrives in the shape of a loud, coarse local girl called Ruby (Zellweger) whose first trick is to wring the neck of the old rooster that's been terrorising Ada. "Let's put him in the pot!" she cries.
The film, then, follows the journeys - inner and outer - of these three key characters. Mortally wounded in an army hospital, Inman receives a letter from Ada saying whatever he is doing to stop, and "come back to me". Now a deserter, he begins his long and arduous journey, as the film intercuts with Ada's journey from child to maturity, as she transforms into an independent woman, and develops a close, sisterly bond with Ruby.
The friendship between the two women is as much a love story,as is the romantic love between Ada and Inman. Indeed, the whole film seems to ruminate on the essence of love. Besides the central storylines, we also see the love between Ada and her father; the more difficult relationship between Ruby and her fiddle-playing no-good father (Gleeson); love between husband and wife, and the family unit; and, of course, love for the homestead and all that is held dear. And people having to fight to retain this is what creates the conflict within the film. Love stories, as opposed to romantic comedies, can be mawkish, over-sentimental and, very often, downright laughable. Minghella has managed to avoid all the pitfalls. His themes strike right to the core of the human condition, whilst his characters - lead and support alike - are complex, three-dimensional, and utterly believable. The most moving moment, perhaps, is when Ruby's father finally tells her that "in case the sky falls" he loves her, a phrase later picked up by Kidman to her friends. That very sky whose colour can't be put into words should never be taken for granted for one day it might not be there. If you love someone tell them while you can. This sets the scene for Inman's return and for all that was left unsaid to finally be said. However, Cold Mountain is in the grip of the local homeguard, headed by Teague (Ray Winstone), who has particularly nasty ways of dealing with deserters and all those who harbour them.
Cold Mountain is unfortunate in that it has been released in the year that all the awards have already been put aside for the final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is a shame. This is filmmaking of the highest order - well-scripted, well-paced, beautifully shot and edited, a hugely enjoyable soundtrack, and first-class performances. For this reviewer, Cold Mountain is superior to The English Patient, and the 153 minutes never seem too long, although being an incurable romantic probably helps a little too!
Jean Lynch
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