looks like nicole's audition tape for estee lauder

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2004)

There are many striking images to come out of Cold Mountain, the current screen adaptation of the novel by Charles Frazier about the final days of the America Civil War and one confederate soldier's arduous journey home to the woman he loves. The magnificent vistas of the Appalachian Mountains in both winter and spring is one, as are the battle scenes with their gut-wrenching mix of mud and blood. But perhaps the most enduring image, for better or worse, is Nicole Kidman as the film's heroine, Ada Monroe.
Kidman, undoubtedly the screen's most luminous beauty at this moment, shines like a porcelain doll through much of the movie, while the rest of her cast-mates are covered in sweat, blood and grime. Ironic, too, that she should remain such a vision throughout so much of the movie given the transformation she undergoes from pristine and protected preacher's daughter to independent farm-owner. Unfortunately, Kidman, with her perfectly chiseled features, rouged cheeks and spun-gold hair, looks like she is from another movie, not the `at the end of her tether' heroine on the brink of ruin you expect here.
Perhaps director Anthony Minghella wanted to present Ada in an idyllic light, showcase her as a fantasy of what her lover strives so mightily to return home to. If that is the case, it is the one misstep Minghella makes in this outstanding epic of love, war, the ties that bind and man's inhumanity to man. Minghella, whose other works include such outstanding films as The Talented Mr. Ripley and The English Patient, brings to bear his signature talent for deftly blending the epic and the intimate on this singularly captivating story. Witness the grand scale of the battle at Petersburg in the film's opening moments, grand masses of men going to their slaughter, seamlessly intercut with shots of a tintype picture carefully preserved in a book, lovingly carried by a soldier far from home and his love.
Cold Mountain centers around the love story between Kidman's Ada, the daughter of Donald Sutherland's Reverend Monroe, and Jude Law's Inman, a hard-working young man who is called to war. She is only recently arrived in the North Carolina village of Cold Mountain, but they are immediately attracted to each other and profess their love for each other the day Inman is called to war.
Injured in battle and captured by Union troops, Inman recovers enough that he escapes from his hospital bed and begins a long, perilous journey home to Ada. Meanwhile, the death of the Reverend Monroe leaves Ada home alone with no means of support, no ability to till and maintain her farm, and a corrupt local law-keeper hanging around, determined to marry her for her farm. Fortune steps in and sends her Renee Zellweger's plain-looking, plain-talking and hard-working Ruby Thewes, who helps Ada get the farm up and running again.
There are many delights to partake of in Cold Mountain, not the least of which is Jude Law's nearly dialouge-free performance as Inman. Law holds the audience spellbound, projecting a quiet intensity and determination of will that seems to propel him toward home and Ada. Along the way, he encounters a variety of characters who both help and hinder him, including Philip Seymour Hoffman as a disgraced priest, Giovanni Ribisi's duplicitous farmer and Natalie Portman's abandoned widow, left alone to care for the sick child of her dead husband.
Her seemingly untouchable looks aside, Kidman creates a fascinating picture of the prototypic southern belle (though not in the Gone With the Wind, Jezebel tradition). Her Ada embarks on a deeply personal, inward journey in which she encounters her own roster of memorable characters, from Ray Winstone's cruel lawkeeper , Kathy Baker's kind and nurturing neighbor and Brendan Gleeson's redeemed father to Zellweger's Ruby.
As for Zellweger, she commits an overt act of piracy and steals Cold Mountain from both Kidman and Law. Almost unrecognizable at her entrance, and using an accent that verges on parody, Zellweger's Ruby ultimately injects Cold Mountain with a boost of human comedy and drama that is at once thoroughly charming, heartbreaking and endearing. She takes charge of the screen as assuredly as Ruby takes charge of Ada's farm, and just like Ruby, she complements, never detracts, from the central focus of the love story that is Ada and Inman.
Orchestrating this entire enterprise, of course, in Minghella, the Oscar-winning director of The English Patient. He is likely to be a top contender for that award again this year, given the burning passion he invests in Cold Mountain. (*** ½)