Western odyssey
More a
Civil War drama than a Western, Cold
Mountain is still a very good picture that has Western tints.
As is
often the case these days, the stars are far from obvious choices for Western
or nineteenth century American stories. The protagonists of this one are an
Australian and a Brit, the director is English and there are actors of various
nationalities in supporting roles. I don’t object to this by any means. The
actors are so professional and so convincing with their accents these days that
as soon as you get past the recognition of Nicole Kidman or Jude Law or other
actors (the same problem any star has) you accept them as 1860s Carolinians or whatever. Think of Russell Crowe
and Christian Bale in the 3:10 to Yuma
remake, Peter Mullan in The Claim, or
many others. These actors are entirely convincing. Directors like Anthony
Minghella or Andrew Dominik understood the American movie and made good ones.
The
novel Cold Mountain came out in 1997.
It was written by Charles Frazier, born in North Carolina, MA from Appalachian
State University, PhD from University of South Carolina. He knows the
Carolinas. Dr. Frazier’s book, set in the Civil War, is wonderfully
atmospheric, deeply researched and utterly convincing. It is beautifully,
almost poetically written and above all it captures the atmosphere of that time
and that place. The film had a hard act to follow.
Fine novel
That was
especially true because the book is essentially about two people who have
barely met (“I hardly even know her,” says Inman, wonderingly), who are then
separated by war and spend most of the novel yearning to be together again but
remaining apart. Cold Mountain is
really an odyssey, a book about a long and perilous journey home, and the
protagonists only come together again at the end. Their development as
characters, as people, happens while they are apart. That isn’t the ideal
scenario for a star-vehicle film.
Star vehicle
But it
works. Law as Inman is outstanding as, to begin with, the gauche, shy carpenter
who meets the beautiful lady from Charleston, and Kidman (Ada Monroe) is
equally good as the lady who loves but is too well brought up to flirt. She is
very blonde, slightly fey, luminous. There’s almost a Last of the Mohicans (1992 version) vibe about the relationship. Then Law’s Inman goes
off to war and suffers such horrors, and Kidman’s Penelope-like Ada is left
alone (her father, played by Donald Sutherland, dies in the garden, she frees
her slaves, she can afford no laborers) to manage a farm about which she knows
nothing, or starve.
First meeting
The
set-piece of the Battle of the Crater in the Siege of Petersburg is
extraordinarily rendered. In July 1864, the Federals mined Lee’s position and
caused a huge explosion. General Burnside’s soldiers charged wildly into the
bomb crater. The Confederates under General Mahone regrouped, formed round the
crater and started firing with rifles and even artillery down into it in what
was cruelly described as a “turkey shoot”. Grant said it was “the saddest
affair I have witnessed in this war”.
The
character of Inman is based on a real person, Frazier’s great-great-uncle
William Pinkney Inman, a
private in Company F of the 25th North Carolina Infantry, who did indeed survive the battle,
was wounded twice, then deserted the ranks to return to Cold Mountain in
western North Carolina, where his grave still lies.
The
narrative alternates between the lives of Inman and Ada, and the film echoes
that, flitting between short scenes in a way I found too much, though I suppose
it does at least emphasize the separation. On his journey Inman encounters all
sorts of strange people and survives many dangers. Particularly well done in
the movie are the episodes with the old crone in the woods (Eileen Atkins, very
good) who shelters and doctors him, and gives him words of deep wisdom, and Sara,
the chaste siren war widow with a baby (Natalie Portman, excellent). The late
Philip Seymour Hoffman is also outstanding (as he always was) as a
rascally corrupt preacher whom Inman at first chastises and then befriends.
Atkins as crone
Portman as chaste siren
But the
character who really dominates is the earthy Ruby, and indeed Renée Zellweger
won the awards that were going. The film was nominated for seven Oscars and
eight Golden Globes, and Zellweger won the only ones, for Best Supporting
Actress, in both contests. She is amazing as the clodhopping young farm woman
who comes to Ada’s rescue. The relationship is finely handled as the two
women develop from an almost (though not quite) servant/mistress relationship,
through teacher/pupil into (chaste) love.
Zelweger outstanding
Also very fine is the picaresque,
almost Dickensian character of Ruby’s father, the musician Stobrod Thewes, played
by Dubliner Brendan Gleeson, who was in another semi-Western with Kidman, Far and Away (1992) and whom I remember best
as the gangster hitman of In Bruges. He
is an extraordinarily talented actor.
Brendan Gleeson as the Dickensian Stobrod Thewes
The
music, in fact, is one of the best aspects of the film. The credits are
absurdly long these days and it is hard to find significant contributors but hidden
in the monstrous list under ‘music department’ you find ‘Executive music
producer, T-Bone Burnett’ and any movie with his name there will be superior.
He was responsible for one of the few admirable features of the dreadful Heaven’s Gate in 1980 and in the
non-Western arena think of Walk the Line or O Brother, Where Art Thou? Stobrod has
discovered a gift for violin and some musical partners to play with him some
haunting, beautiful Appalachian tunes. There is a fine part in the film where
the appalling vigilante ‘home guard’ commander Teague (brilliantly played by
the excellent Ray Winstone of The Proposition)
recognizes a tune and faintly sings along before nevertheless passing to an act
of disgusting brutality.
Ray Winstone as Teague
Moronic male
brutality is really the central theme of this anti-war picture. The soldiers on
both sides, as well as the peripheral gunmen like the so-called home guard are
base murderers, torturers and rapists. Rare are the men of any sensitivity or
who despise war (Stobrod is one). It is the women who hold society together, at
their huge cost.
Two very good actors in smaller parts, Donald Sutherland and James Gammon
Visually
the film is very fine and the John Seale (The
Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient, Mosquito Coast) photography of
the Romanian, Virginian and South Carolinian locations is stunningly good. The production designer Dante Ferretti and
costume designer Ann Roth also deserve high praise for the look of the movie.
Cold Mountain is a magic, atmospheric film with certain
weaknesses, sure, but a worthy cinematic version of a fine novel.
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