Hollywood's Civil War Executed with Commanding Skill

Rating: 8/10 (25 December 2003)

Oscar nominations for "Cold Mountain" are assured. It's a sweeping micro-epic of the Civil War and it succeeds where other recent sprawling films about the great internecine conflict, "Gods and Generals" for example, fail. And the reason why it holds viewers' attention through two and a half hours is that it focuses on relationships - good, bad and homicidal - rather than on the great battles and still controversial generals from that conflict. Unlike "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" we can all sit back in comfort and not debate or challenge whether Lee knew his business, a subject that prompts vigorous personal exchanges both North and South to this date.
Based on Charles Frazier's outstanding novel of the same name "Cold Mountain" tracks Inman, Jude Law, a young, taciturn laborer falling in love with Ada, Nicole Kidman, as all in the small hilly North Carolina town await the act of secession that will lead to war.
Australian-actress-of-any-accent-needed Kidman is marvelous as Ada who falls in love with Inman (no first name) before he joins his friends to march off to a jolly war guaranteed to be over in a short time. Inman, of course, has fallen for the preacher's blond and beautiful daughter. They exchange tintypes (an early form of photography). Donald Sutherland is the clergyman and he delivers an expectedly competent and familiar performance.
Inman does not have, as the English might say, "a good war." He is present - up front and personal - when the Army of the Potomac launches one of the great disasters of its march on Richmond, the mining of Confederate lines before Petersburg. A curiosity: the slaughter of Union troops trapped in the Crater following the explosion is quite accurately depicted. But the troops sent in were largely black and inexperienced and here they're all white. Why so obvious a distortion of a horrific event? (Incidentally, the white brigadier general who commanded the black troops was hiding in his quarters behind the lines dead drunk while his men perished. Since the whole misbegotten, failed operation was an enormous embarrassment to generals Grant and Meade and the main Union casualties were just blacks, the drunk was quietly dismissed rather than being shot.)
Inman survives a grievous wound and, barely recovered, he decides to check out of the Army of Northern Virginia and hike home. To Ada, of course.
On his journey he has many adventures most of which could have been fatal. He meets and makes and loses friends. He meets and eludes or dispatches foes. Jude Law is man with a grim determination that impresses and engrosses. His pain becomes the audience's. That's a compliment about how well he wears his role.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, literally, Ada has taken in as a partner, not a servant, Ruby, played with insouciance bordering on the hopelessly comedic, by Reneee Zellweger. There must be a reason why a large part of the audience broke out laughing when Ruby makes her first appearance in an unfolding set of scenes that has humor but also pathos.
All is not well in the environs of Cold Mountain where law and order seems to have been exclusively delegated to a small crew of Home Guard vigilantes whose cruelty and mindless killing polarizes the characters. There were vigilantes hunting Union sympathizers and Confederate deserters, especially at the tail end of the war, but this crew is off the charts. I don't think anyone in the theater liked them. I hope not. The actors are excellent in an expectedly stereotyped portrayal. Forget Manhattan, they won't be cheered in the Deep South. I think.
A short but intensely emotional performance is Natalie Portman's as the Confederate widow, Sara, alone in her forest cabin with her little baby when first Inman and then a trio of Union soldiers arrive. Portman is believable and moving. She is Everywoman who is victimized by conflicts men fight and women and children pay for with if not their lives, their welfare.
Curiously, except perhaps for Florida which fell to Union forces early in the conflict, North Carolina saw little actual combat (the one significant battle in that state, Bentonville, was near the end of the war). The privations that occupy much of the screen time were common as the war drew to its disastrous close for the rebels but in North Carolina things were largely better than elsewhere.
Director and screenplay writer Anthony Minghella crafted a surprisingly taut drama given its length and the complexity of interactions by numerous characters. The cinematography is excellent-the movie was shot in Romania which, it's been reported, looks more like North Carolina in 1864 than any part of that state does today. I'm not sure if that's good for Romanians.
General Sherman said that "War is hell and you can not refine it." Hollywood has grappled with the dilemma of capturing America's war that is still being fought over 140 years later. D.W. Griffith was the first prominent director to deal with the war and its issues and the celluloid avalanche hasn't stopped. "Cold Mountain" will achieve success throughout the country because it has truly terrible characters on both sides, avoids any real discussion of root issues such as slavery and shows kindness to slaves (Ava's willingness to go out in the rain to deliver cider to the slave quarters during a big party is almost enough to make one wonder what the fuss was all about). The war in "Cold Mountain is brutal as it affects individuals and meaningless as a recounting of a conflict without comparison in our history. So general audience acceptance north and south of the Mason-Dixon Line (meaning box office receipts) is assured.
But it is a very good, not a great movie, largely because of the intensity of Law's and Kidman's acting. And we'll be seeing white-knuckled cast members in the audience at Oscar time. Trust me on that.
8/10.