Civil War of blood, pain, love fails to reach the heights

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2008)

After 630 or so comments what remains to be said? A European view maybe? The film fails. Why? Historically, its so American. 1860 of the civil war was fought primarily between the European immigrants who fled Europe because of the continual wars, social conflicts, poverty that their generations had experienced. The film lacks this perspective. The films from the great directors on war, U.S. and European, avoid the exaggerated dense combat in such a compressed colour spectrum as that of the Cold Mountain, found however in European paintings but nowhere better than in Leonardo da Vinci's Battle of Anghiari. Paintings are not films. Cold Mountain lacks distance, space and battle rhythm that is so well done in Sam Peckinpath's masterpiece Cross of Iron in the other great war films. The love story fails to reach the heights of intense emotion as other U.S. and European war films have done. The acting is good, but no better than many other films of relatively good quality. Strong coherence of a powerful current throughout the film is lacking. Through American eyes the film has nostalgic merit but as an independent work of art in the western world it lacks emotional conviction, and so sadly fails.