Misery Lesson

Rating: 4/10 (5 September 2006)

One of the astounding things about "Cold Mountain" is How Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellwegger's characters manage to keep their eyebrows in such good shape. Through famine and war, these two women maintain the most finely drawn eyebrows in movie history.
It says a lot that I was able to notice Kidman's and Zellwegger's eyebrows with all the tragedy, action and pathos being chucked at me. To be honest, most of it washed over me, leaving me to ponder such questions as "Why does Jack White sound like a whiny brat on his albums when he sings very well in this movie?" and "Did the producers of 'My Name is Earl' cast Ethan Suplee because of his role in this film?"
Anthony Minghella has written and directed a hybrid of the classic Hollywood epic and the classic anti-war movie. In my mind, this fails to work because there is so little hope expressed. Inman's journey from Petersburg to his home at Cold Mountain is almost entirely depressing. He has to slog through pretty much every extreme of human cruelty on his way back to Ada, who is hardly having the time of her life at home. The film's only tiny victory is that Ada ends up with a loyal band of friends and family at the end. It's that perfect, trite, white middle-class ending, perched on the peak of a Golgotha of suffering, that made me give this film such a low score.
This movie would have been so much worse with a less talented cast. However, it could have been so much better with a more original script.