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Its pedigree is first rate, the kind of cinematic stuff of which mythical films are made of. And, from a technical stand point, it’s a lush, dreamy epic filled with war, romance, survival, eternal love and devotion, death and hope. But it never ignites the burner beyond a cool, distant flame when it should have engulfed with scorching white heat. Cold Mountain relies a little too heavily on longing, icy stares in its central relationship, goes a tad too broad with some supporting players, and can’t overcome an episodic narrative structure to really invest us in the tragic romance at the core.
Concerned far less with any true realistic grasp of the Civil War (where exactly are any black characters of note or importance?), and more in-line with a high-class romance novel, Cold Mountain tells the doomed love affair of Inman (Jude Law) and Ada (Nicole Kidman). Their romance was barely starting when the war breaks out and rips them from each other, nothing more than a few longing glances and stolen kisses to sustain themselves upon as they both keep those embers glowing throughout their time apart. One of the film’s main flaws in how icily and distant the central romance is treated. There’s no sexual heat or chemistry between these two, just two pretty people staring at each other vacantly, coldly.
But I digress. While injured in the war, Inman decides to walk (!) back to Ada and Cold Mountain, where she lives. Along the way he encounters one colorful character after another, each played by an actor eager to make a lasting impression with limited screen time. Ada, struggling to stay alive after the death of her father (Donald Sutherland, removed from the film far too soon), gets help from Ruby (Renée Zellweger), a cartoonish spark plug who raises Ada from the living-dead and helps her on her way to self-actualization.
Thus, we have the basic premise for the three hour film. Certain cameo roles linger in the mind and we wish we could have spent more time with them. Philip Seymour Hoffman shows up for two sequences as a randy man of the cloth in the first, and later as the same man long after he’s stopped being a preacher. His rascal of a character is well-played by Hoffman (but when is he ever bad?), and enlivens up the scenes against wooden Inman. Then there is Brendan Gleeson, Ethan Suplee and Jack White (of the White Stripes) as a trio of traveling musicians with ties to Ruby. Gleeson is particularly effective in his scenes as he seems to be playing an actual person in an actual landscape as opposed to much of the pretty doll posturing of several other cast members. And Jack White surprisingly shows off a gift for acting, he’s tender, sweet and head-over-heels for Ruby.
The most touching episode is the one in which Inman comes across a war widow with a young infant. The widow is played by Natalie Portman in a truly poignant performance. She’s desperate for a little bit of human kindness and for the warmth and comfort of her husband. What almost befalls her is too awful a fate for such a sweet, wounded creature, and I won’t reveal what happens or how it plays out, but Portman knocks her brief screen time out of the park.
This takes us back to our three leads, who offer up varying performances in what feels like two or three tonally different movies. Law and Kidman, 90% of their screen time kept apart, seem to live in two different films. Law’s a survival story about the hellish nature of war, the determination to return to domesticity, and he quietly delivers a nice performance. There are moments of pure movie star charisma, but he isn’t asked to do too much besides stare off prettily and grow an increasingly large amount of facial hair (which looks far too groomed). His character is the one stuck travelling from place to place, meeting new and quirky bit players. He must be the stoic, determined hero to everyone else’s scenery-chewing.
Kidman, an actress who can be cold and remote in the best possible ways, is almost mostly tasked with staring off into the distance. Even in the scenes where she is supposed to look like death is encroaching upon her, her hair, eyebrows and nails are all far too manicured. This distances us from her performance, which makes it easy to feel sympathetic for her but hard to root for her. That she spends so much time moodily walking around and gazing into the distance is the fault of the script, as Kidman’s presence gives her character an ethereal edge that is quite nice.
Zellweger appears on the screen and saves us from the tedium of watching Inman and Ada walk around, stare dreamily, and say maybe two words for long stretches of time. But her performance is so broad that it dips into caricature. She’s got a great introduction and a few good scenes with Gleeson, but she decides to pitch her performance at such a large, grand level that it gets to be a little too much. She seems to have wandered in from an entirely different movie.
But Cold Mountain isn’t all bad. There’s many parts to praise – the sets, costumes, cinematography, score are all top rate. Yet everything is working to look so glossy and classy that it keeps the film at a remote glance. There is no whole, complete work of art that the film is working towards. And there are a few moments of true emotion and human connection which are quite nice, yet too much time is spent looking at what amounts to a moving diorama. But it sure is pretty to look at.
