Overall Rating
  Awesome: 18.56%
Worth A Look: 39.18%
Average: 13.92%
Pretty Bad: 14.95%
Total Crap: 13.4%
13 reviews, 116 user ratings
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| Cold Mountain |
by MP Bartley
"It's such a long journey to Cold Mountain..."
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Ok voters, get your checklist out...Based on a highly acclaimed novel? Check. Themes of sweeping romance amongst warfare? Check. Hottest cast possible, including recent Oscar winners? Check. Has the director got an Oscar? Check. Alrighty then, we got ourselves a winner! Oh, actually hold on...It would seem that 'Cold Mountain' has the all the required ingredients for a sure-fire winner. Director Anthony Minghella certainly knows how to take epic stories and give them lavish settings and memorable characters. Add to that a cast list which has more than it's fair share of quality - Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, Renee Zellwegger, Brendan Gleeson, Natalie Portman, Donald Sutherland, Ray Winstone amongst others - and you would think you have a winner on your hands. But you don't. What you have is a mis-fire that lacks the quality to hold these ingredients together.
Kidman is Ada Monroe, daughter of a reverend (Sutherland) who has just moved to the Carolina farmlands of Cold Mountain. There she meets the introspective joiner, Inman (Law). An attraction between the two is obvious, but one kiss later Inman is packed off to the civil war, and one heart attack later, Ada is forced to run the farm herself while fighting off the attentions of local lawman Teague (Winstone) who has set himself up as judge, jury and executioner of Cold Mountain. The only help she has comes from local hillbilly Ruby (Zellwegger).
Inman surprisingly doesn't like war and instead deserts with the aim of returning to Ada and Cold Mountain.
It's a long journey and one that you'll feel every step of the way with him. Not because this is an exhausting, dangerous journey like say 'Lawrence of Arabia' or 'The Lord of the Rings' but because it's just so damn boring. Clocking in at over 2 hours and 20 minutes, someone should have done Minghella a favour and torn out some of the pages of the book, or even better the script. Instead, Inman and the film itself, trudges ever onwards in the search of something, anything to help spark some interest in the proceedings. The narrative of 'Cold Mountain' can be pretty summed up as such Inman walks - meets someone - they're good - he walks some more - meets someone - they're bad! - walks some more - meets someone else - they're good - oh, no wait they're bad.
It's easy to dismiss the film in such simple terms, but the fact of the matter is that rarely is any of this interesting. For every person that Inman meets that makes an impression - Philip Seymour Hoffman is particularly good as a sleazy priest - he'll meet two more that do nothing more than hold up the plot and break up any momentum that Minghella has got going.
There's also little sense of time or space. How far or how long has Inman been wandering (and wandering sums up this film quite neatly)? Who knows, a few days, two weeks, 6 months... it's never made clear. Likewise, how far apart they are is a matter of guesswork. All this combines to leave you with little narrative to grasp.
Furthermore, it's one of the least atmospheric films you'll see for a long time. The opening blood and mud battle of St Petersburg would seem to be a good portent of things to come, but it's far, far too brief and the only time there's a sense of history. Apart from that, Inman's trek could be a pleasureable backyard stroll. Ditto for the action at Cold Mountain. No real sense of the hardship or of the biting winters that hit hard. Everything looks far too pleasant.
Most films can be rescued with a great cast. 'Cold Mountain' has a great cast. But they don't work. Jude Law always has presence, for his cheekbones if nothing else, but he needs more to give the audience, for us to care about Inman. A quiet man at the best of times, the long passages of dialogue-free travelling that Inman features in give us a frustratingly vague picture of the man. Law just doesn't have anything going on behind the eyes to give us a clue at the anger or horror inside the character. Inman hates war? Show me a forcibly enlisted soldier that doesn't.
Kidman manages to give us more about Ada, but has one problem - she's far too old. Ada calls for a virginal woman in her early to mid-twenties. Kidman is in her forties, and never rings true in the part. Zellwegger is taking a lot of the critical acclaim for her screeching Ruby, with an accent that's either authentic or annoying depending on your point of view. Ultimately it's the brief parts that stick in the mind in the most - Brendan Gleeson's and Jack White's travelling musicians, Natalie Portman's young mother. It's probably no co-incidence that the film finally picks up and becomes as moving or as dramatic as it should have been when Portman enters. In fact put her in Kidman's part, and you'd have a much more realistic Ada and a much better film. The reason 'Cold Mountain' doesn't descend into one-star suckage are the performances of the minor players such as these.
The main problem that 'Cold Mountain' has, is that the love story is in the wrong place. 'Cold Mountain' just loves itself and the love between Ada and Inman never rings true. It's perhaps stretching belief that they'd become so obsessed with each other after one kiss, but the film never works to fill in the romance. It's sketchy at best, but the film asks you to take it on trust, because it's so IMPORTANT and it's about LOVE after all. A film has to do more than just shout "Look it's about love I tell you! Just feel sad...NOW". There's no real emotion, just Minghella convinced that his story is so worthy we'll fall in love with his film, without him having the decency to work at it.
Maybe if there'd been more of an attempt to give it an actual atmosphere or a solid story, then it would have worked, but instead 'Cold Mountain' just limps along to it's painfully obvious and cliched end. Sometimes what seems to be the right cast, the right material and the right director...just aren't right.If you've ever seen an episode of 'The Waltons' you might have a good idea of the way that 'Cold Mountain' ends. Because as well as being boring and in love with itself, 'Cold Mountain' has it's fair share of cheeseball moments. Every Southern character offers goofy, farmland platitudes that grate and by the time Ada is seeing visions in a well and Inman has visited a witch, you might think you've wandered into 'Scary Movie 4' by mistake. Portman, Winstone and Seymour Hoffman aside, there's very little to champion about 'Cold Mountain'. And that includes YOU Academy. It's such a long journey to Cold Mountain, you'll have probably forgotten why you've took it by the time you get there.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=8421&reviewer=293
originally posted: 01/27/04 03:07:14
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USA
25-Dec-2003 (R)
DVD: 29-Jun-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
01-Jan-2004
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