travel from the war

Rating: 9/10 (7 November 2017)

I should start by noting that I've never read the novel on which Anthony Minghella's "Cold Mountain" is based. Seeing the movie on its own, I can say that it's a good movie. The gist of it is that war damages all sides involved. Inman (Jude Law) and Ada (Nicole Kidman) have vastly dissimilar experiences in the US Civil War but they both get affected by it. Even after the war, the effects will take years or even decades to heal.
The most interesting character in the movie is Ruby (Renée Zellweger). From a background unlike Ada's, she always has something to say. But she, like the other characters, won't remain untouched by the events surrounding her.
One of the points made with the movie is that not every southerner at the time was a slave-owning racist. Plenty of them rejected the plantation system and simply wanted to live their lives. It was unfortunate that the events of the ten years following the Civil War resulted in the old Confederates rising to power again and establishing the Jim Crow Laws, resulting in almost a century of institutionalized racism.
Anyway, it's worth seeing. Zellweger deserved her Oscar for her role.