A Confederate Odyssey

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2004)

Possible Spoilers
Ever since `Birth of a Nation' and `Gone with the Wind', Hollywood has tended to be over-indulgent towards the Confederacy, playing down the evils of slavery and treating the rebel forces as, at best, romantic heroes and, at the very worst, misguided but nevertheless honourable. `Cold Mountain', which tells the story of a deserter from the Confederate forces during the American Civil War, is a welcome exception to this tendency. The central character Inman, who comes from a remote mountainous area of North Carolina, joins the Confederate army in a fit of bravado along with many other young men from his village. He deserts it not out of cowardice but because he has come to realise that the cause for which he is fighting is a hopeless one, both in the sense that it is doomed to failure and in the sense that it is morally worthless. There is no `romance of the Old South' in this film. The Civil War is shown for what it was- a grim and (on the part of the South) desperately defensive struggle, fought for much of the time in trenches and prefiguring the later stalemate of the First World War. The battle scenes with which the film opens are particularly graphic and dramatic and vividly convey the hardships suffered by the soldiers.
After deserting, Inman tries to return to his native village of Cold Mountain and to his sweetheart Ada. The film recounts his many adventures along the way, intercut with scenes showing Ada's life in his absence. (There are echoes of `The Odyssey' in this tale of a soldier facing dangers as he attempts to make his way back to his loved one). Both Inman and Ada face great difficulties. The greatest danger to Inman is not so much the Northern armies as the `Home Guard', a band of Confederate irregulars who ruthlessly hunt down deserters and others they regard as disloyal to their cause. Ada's greatest difficulty is that she is a genteel, well-bred city girl who knows little about farming or housekeeping and finds it difficult to cope with life in a remote village, especially after the death of her clergyman father. She is helped to survive, however, by her friend Ruby, an uneducated but capable and practical young woman.
It is interesting that in a film set in America and dealing with one of the central episodes of American history neither of the lead roles is played by an American; Inman is played by the British Jude Law and Ada by the Australian Nicole Kidman. There are a number of other non-Americans in key roles; Ada's father is played by the Canadian Donald Sutherland, and Teague, the villainous leader of the Home Guard, by another Englishman, Ray Winstone. The Israeli Natalie Portman has a role as Sara, a young widow whom Inman meets on his journey. The director, of course, is an Englishman of Italian descent, and the film, despite its ostensible setting, was actually filmed in Rumania. Filmmaking seems to be becoming more international, even when the film concerns an American subject.
Nicole Kidman's acting in this part was a pleasant surprise to me. I had previously thought of her as the cinema's equivalent of the duck-billed platypus- happy only in her native Australian habitat- and she has her share of horrors on her CV (`Far and Away', `Batman Forever', the dull `The Peacemaker' and the truly dreadful `Moulin Rouge'). `Cold Mountain' is the first film in which I have seen her since `Flirting' in the early 1990s in which I have felt she was completely at her ease. I am not familiar with the dialects of the Carolinas, so I am not worried about whether her accent was entirely accurate. What matters is that she gives a convincing and touching performance. Jude Law's performance as Inman was adequate but not especially brilliant, and I found his Best Actor nomination surprising. There were good cameos from Portman (a welcome return to form after her `Star Wars' experiences) and from Philip Seymour Hoffman as a lustful preacher. The real star, however, was Renee Zellwegger as Ruby, a character who is ignorant but sensible and crude but sympathetic. Her Best Supporting Actress nomination is one that is well deserved.
The other striking feature of the film is its magnificent cinematography, particularly the shots of the mountain scenery. Although the title of the film is taken from the name of the village, it is an appropriate one in that much of the story is set in wintertime, and the memorable scenes of the beautiful but bleak snowbound landscapes are a vivid symbol of one of the coldest, bleakest periods in American history. This is not the best film of 2003 (in my view both `Return of the King' and `Girl with a Pearl Earring' were better), but it is nonetheless an excellent one, a testimony to the human capacity for both cruelty and hope. 8/10.