I liked the violence!

Rating: Null/10 (26 February 2004)

I went to see "Cold Mountain" with my wife and in the end we had a big argument--of course she liked it and I could not get out of the theater soon enough. But then even two days later I was thinking about the movie, and even had some dreams about it! The film clearly had a powerful effect on me.
Why was that? It was surely not the acting (the interactions between the protagonists are uninspiring--they give each other long looks that were supposed to embody pain and passion and that was it). It was not the character development (absolutely lacking except as the plot outline promised Ada "struggles to keep the farm" which culminates in her successfully shooting a turkey!). It was not the predictable plot (the cast of different characters Inman meets on his journey was the only redeeming feature). And even as the sweeping shots of Romanian landscape were good, I had a strange feeling that the cinematographer could have done a lot more with the peace and beauty of nature--as opposed to the gory mess the warring men create out of life.
Come to think about it later, that was it. The most haunting and redeeming feature of the film was that tons of people die in it. None of deaths is beautiful. None of the deaths is glorious. All the deaths seem almost inevitable. Nothing is more contrasting than the Southern jubilation on the great news "we got a war" shown (in a flashback) after one of the most gory battle scenes ever shot. It makes you really consider the frailty of life and especially question thinking about wars from your armchair in terms of geopolitical abstractions. (reminds me of "Dead Iraqi Would Have Loved Freedom" article from The Onion). It's interesting that just like in the "English Patient" Minghella takes up the cause of the losing side in the conflict.
All in all, an overlong, cheesy Oscar vehicle--but not a total failure.