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Moving Mountain
By David
Lee Simmons
FILM: Cold
Mountain (R)
DIRECTOR: Anthony Minghella
STARRING: Jude Law, Nicole
Kidman
WHERE: Opens Thursday
in wide release
GRADE: B
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| Ada
Monroe (Nicole Kidman) sends W.P. Inman (Jude Law) off to
the Civil War with a little reading material in Anthony
Minghella's cinematic adaptation of Cold Mountain.
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Six years later, and the formula is all too easy
to spot: a literary adaptation of a prestige novel, a romantic
love story set in a romantic land against the backdrop of war,
sweeping cinematography, a lush soundtrack filled with indigenous
songs. If anyone knows how to dial up Mr. Oscar, it's the Weinsteins
of Miramax Boulevard.
So, yes, before anything else, let's get one thing clear:Cold
Mountain is as tailored a film for Oscar consideration as
you will find this Academy Award, er, holiday season. Hoping
to match the Oscar glory bestowed upon the 1997's epic The
English Patient, the Weinsteins reunited with director Anthony
Minghella with one primary goal: bring home the bacon. They
bequeathed him an A-list cast with tons of "name" supporting
characters and brought back most of The English Patient's
A-list crew (including Oscar-winning cinematographer John Seale,
trading in deserts for mountain ranges). With gorgeous, Oscar-friendly
folk like Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renée Zellweger dotting
your cinematic landscape, how could you go wrong?
But if the Weinsteins, and by extension Minghella, are guilty
of deliberately crafting Cold Mountain
for tissue-grabbing and award-season honors, they're vindicated
by a capable adaptation of yet another dense novel for the big
screen. Make no mistake, author Charles Frazier's 1997 National
Book Award winner is no page-turner; it is a meditative work
with huge expanses of rumination and despair and pages upon
pages of no dialogue whatsoever. Then again, Minghella scored
major critical kudos (with some backlash from fans) for his
treatment of The English Patient, so theoretically, if
anyone could crack the text ofCold Mountain, it
would be him.
And in many ways, he does it quite well here, once again stripping
down the story to the more basic elements, which in Hollywood
inevitably means the love story. He ratchets up the romance
between icy, over-protected Ada Monroe (Kidman) and brooding,
introspective W.P. Inman (Law). Getting most of the book's flashbacks
out of the way by moving them up to the front, Minghella attempts
to win our hearts over by early on establishing the connection
between these two reluctant lovers. So while Ada tries to salvage
her late father's (Donald Sutherland) farm, Inman deserts his
Confederate unit to begin a long, Homeric trek home to Cold
Mountain and (he hopes) Ada.
Because so much of Cold Mountain the
book was an homage of sorts to Homer's The Odyssey, there
must have been some fear that Inman's long walk home (and some
of Ada's homesteading) might come off as merely episodic on
film. And at times it does. Minghella seems duty-bound to guide
us through each of Inman's encounters: a defrocked preacher
(Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a scheming farmer (Giovanni Ribisi),
a mystical old woman (Eileen Atkins), a young widowed mother
(Natalie Portman). Yet, while Cold Mountain
checks in at a whopping two hours and 45 minutes, it doesn't
feel overlong. (I wish the same could be said for Frazier's
sometimes labored book.) That's usually the work of fine editing,
and sure enough, Walter Murch -- one of Hollywood's few rock-star
editors and the guy who saved Apocalypse Now -- has his
fingerprints all over this one, keeping the film moving along
at an almost brisk pace, considering the subject matter.
Where Cold Mountain does get bogged down, though, is
in the acting, which is as mixed a bag as you'll find this year.
There's almost no doubt that all of the leads will score Oscar
nominations -- that is the point after all -- but few rise above
the level of competent. Part of the problem lies in, dare I
say it, the accents. Minghella, you see, is a Brit, and so he
brings along many of his Old World buddies for the ride: the
Aussie Kidman; English folk Law, Eileen Atkins and Ray Winstone;
Irishman Brendon Gleeson. And almost to a person, they butcher
the rich North Carolina twang that Frazier so meticulously captured
on paper.
Kidman in particular is a waste here. As much as she is lauded
for her versatility -- with The Hours, this movie and
The Human Stain, she appears to be bucking for the Literary
Queen of Hollywood -- she looks uncomfortable with both her
role and her language here. Call me a defensive Southerner if
you must, but if they're going to send the British Isles and
their offshoot into the mountains of North Carolina, then by
all rights we should be able to send Billy Bob Thornton to pinch-hit
for Russell Crowe as Master and Commander's Jack Aubrey,
can't we? Danged carpetbaggers!
Bad Southern accents have long plagued Hollywood movies, so
this is nothing new. It's just a shame that a story so grounded
in authenticity -- Frazier researched the history, geography
and people of his home state with religious zeal -- speaks in
faked tongues.
The lone, grand exception to the rule is Gleeson as Stobrod
Thewes, the rehabilitated father of Zellweger's Ruby. If there
is anyone threatening to walk away with this film, it's the
grizzled Gleeson (The General, Gangs of New York),
who actually brings a violinist's training to Stobrod's fiddle-playing
deserter. "I scarred ya," he admits to his skeptical daughter,
before insisting, "Music's changed me." His playing,
singing and sad eyes make everyone, even Ruby, believe him.
While we're on accents, here's a begrudging nod to Zellweger,
whose native Texas accent blurts from the screen to lend a redneck
realism to the proceedings as Ruby, the ultimate nature girl
who helps Ada save her farm from the elements and the evil Teague
(Winstone). That Zellweger lays it on thick, both in accent
and acting, is both a blessing and a curse. When she's not spouting
off one homespun witticism after another (often in list form),
she's staring at Ada and everyone else with a puffy snarl; this
is what we call affectation. Still, Zellweger's the only one
who seems to want to breathe some life into her performance.
She's the joker in this deck, whether you like her or not.
Law, who scored an Oscar nomination in Minghella's previous
work, The Talented Mr. Ripley, is a little overmatched
in tackling the somber Inman. No matter how much mud, blood
and horror Minghella smears on him, Law's duende -- like Kidman
fueled by blonde locks and fiery blue eyes -- always shines
through. Yet, Law keeps slugging away at Inman's role just as
Inman lurches ever homeward, both of them fighting against the
odds to survive.
But if there are stars of this show, they are the sights and
sounds, not unlike the way they shimmered throughout The
English Patient. Instead of a golden, wavy desert, Seale
found himself shooting in the mountains of Romania as well as
Southern states, and the effect is entrancing. Seale is the
kind of cameraman who can make snow look like life and death
all at once, and his forests are rich and mysterious.
And as suspicious as I was while watching Cold Mountain,
ready to dismiss it for its premeditated ways, I kept wondering
why there was this lump in my throat creeping up -- just as
it did toward the conclusion of the novel. Was it the depth
of the story? Was it the clinging desire to see Ada and Inman
reunite and live happily ever after? Nope, it was the music,
courtesy of bluegrass/folk songs produced by T-Bone Burnett
(with advice from Louisiana's Dirk Powell). The real zinger
is Alison Krauss' lament, "You Will Be My Ain True Love." Minghella
capitalizes on Krauss' mournful wail early and often, and it
strikes every sentimental chord in your being -- making as affecting
as the Weinsteins want it to be. Give 'em the Oscars, already.
Like Inman himself, I'm tired of fighting those damn Yankees.
Other Stories This Week in Features:
Cover Story
Cold Mountain Man
Feature
Last But Not Least
Magic Man
Blake Pontchartrain™
New Orleans Know-It-All
Shoptalk
Grape Expectations
Other Stories by David Lee Simmons:
Film Review 12 16 03
Film Review 12 09 03
Film Review 12 09 03
David Lee Simmons Archives
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