"Having a thing, and the loss of it"

Rating: 10/10 (18 April 2012)

American cinema was once very much enamoured of the Civil War. The silent era produced the world's first blockbuster with Birth of a Nation. Then the classic era gave us its crowning achievement in Gone with the Wind. But since then Civil War pictures have been few and far between. That period has to some extent fallen out of favour as a cultural touchstone, and there has of course been widespread condemnation of the overt racism of the former movie and the general of-its-timeness of the latter. Now, with a more realistic approach towards the horrors of conflict and oddly enough a British rather than American production, we finally have another great Civil War epic for our times in Cold Mountain.
Adapted from the popular novel by Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain is an epic that is made vast through its succinct storytelling. The background to the romance between Jude Law and Nicole Kidman is communicated to us with pure images and mere fragments of dialogue. The characters and where they came from is rarely stated overtly, and it seems more natural that way, as if we're watching life pass by before us. In keeping with this director Anthony Minghella (who also adapted the screenplay) often keeps his camera high and distant, although he's not afraid to put us right within the action at times, allowing the liveliness of a character's performance to push the camera away or their calmness to draw it in. His wide-open shots show off the landscape at its finest (Romania often standing in for North Carolina, but this doesn't matter; it looks wonderful), showing off the changeless beauty which surrounds the misery and bloodshed.
The cast of Cold Mountain gives us some fine examples of non-American actors playing Americans, not that you would know for how well Nicole Kidman and Jude Law master the dialect. That lilting Southern States accent rarely sounds very serious to an outsider, but Jude Law manages to bring a strong dignity to the part of Inman. Irishman Brendan Gleeson is excellent as always, and his authentic fiddle-playing is a bonus. Best of the bona fide Americans is Renee Zellwegger. She's massively theatrical, but she gives us just the sort of larger-than-life supporting character the movie needs. She plays the role with life and likability, and she is deep and genuine when it's needed too.
Cold Mountain is, above all things, a powerful romance. There's a sweeping, Odyssey feel to Inman's journey, and a burning idealism to the love story that some might regard as old-fashioned despite the movie's modern take upon warfare. And funnily enough those earlier movies – Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind – weren't overly romantic tales. Cold Mountain is, in a way, more achingly human; a beautiful picture, full of the balance between great evil and great kindness. It's a worthy and far less flawed successor to those Civil War epics of past generations, and it's a real shame it never got quite the reception it deserved.