Cold Mountain (2003)
Hard not to compare this civil war epic love drama to Gone With the Wind. Similar setting and viewpoint with some familiar situations as well, but also does several things different. It has plenty of potential to have become this century’s civil war epic, but falls a bit short of greatness.
The movie starts out with a brutal war scene which is well done and all, but the actual war is not the focus of the narrative. It is more about the effects on normal people that didn’t really want the war. Having Ada and Inman apart for most of the movie works well as a framing for their love story and their individual very similar journeys. Inman on an actual long travel on foot trying to get home and having several a-little-too-exciting “adventures” along the way - meeting some interesting, good and bad people along his way. Ada is at home at the farm, but have a similar journey for survival also having good and bad encounters. Nicole Kidman and Jude Law are doing a fine job, but it is really their sidekicks with Renée Zellweger and Philip Seymour Hoffman that shines. Even though the whole story is their love story, Kidman and Law works best when they are apart.
For all the parts that work as they should, it doesn’t all come together entirely holding the movie back from being truly great. My problem is mainly with the first half which I thought had some strange pacing and editing issues. Switching between Ada and Inman makes sense, but often I found the cuts to be very abrupt and the individual scenes too short - not allowing the minor stories they tell to unfold properly. It could have used with a few “downtime” scenes. In particular, there was a place where we saw a flying shot of Inman walking across some great green scenery and music started playing and I thought we might get a little breather, and then it just cuts. It is not however a fast paced movie, but feels like someone wanted to cut down on the running time but didn’t want to remove any scenes. All this gets better in the second half of the movie though.
Going back to comparing it to Gone With the Wind, while Kidman and Law are doing a fine job, they don’t get close to Vivien Leigh or Clark Gable and their amazing screen presence.
Rating: 4