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Colorful characters make 'Mountain' worth exploring
Renee Zellweger and Nicole Kidman star in 'Cold Mountain'
Phil Bray/Miramax Films
Director: Anthony Minghella.
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger, Jude Law.
MPAA rating: R, for violence and sexuality.
Although it has a flashback set in 1861, when the soft-spoken carpenter W.P. Inman (Jude Law) meets minister's daughter Ada Monroe (Nicole Kidman) in Cold Mountain, N.C., where both reside, the film proper begins in July 1864 at the Siege of Petersburg, Va.
Yankee soldiers dynamite the tunnels in which Confederate soldiers, including Inman, are waiting, leaving most dead and Inman seriously injured. Hospitalized in Virginia, he deserts, starting a 300-mile pilgrimage home to Ada, most of whose letters have never reached him.
The film divides its emphasis during the final days of the Civil War by focusing about half of the time on Inman's trek, a variant on Homer's "The Odyssey," and the rest on Ada as they engage in parallel, but dissimilar, quests for a reunion.
His include an encounter with the randy Rev. Veasey (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a scoundrel named Junior (Giovanni Ribisi) and a goat-tending hermit named Maddy (Eileen Atkins), whose English face is drawn in American Gothic. Many of the actors are British or Australian. Much of the picture was shot in Romania.
The well-bred Ada, daughter of the widowed Rev. Monroe (Donald Sutherland), is multilingual and a pianist, but she lacks survival skills and cannot even cook.
The farm she and her father have occupied since migrating from Charleston is coveted by Teague (Ray Winstone), the persuasively venomous blackguard whose family once owned it. But then, he also covets her.
Too old to be conscripted, Teague and his rabble, "worse than the Yankees," prey as the Home Guard upon their own, feigning righteousness as they search for deserters and war evaders, torturing and slaying anyone who inadvertently gives them an excuse.
Coming to Ada's aid 50 minutes into the film is the self-reliant, industrious drifter Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger).
Although both Kidman and Zellweger lost the best actress Oscar to Halle Berry last year, and Zellweger ("Chicago") lost to Kidman ("The Hours") earlier this year, Zellweger should be a leading contender for what is being expeditiously categorized as a supporting performance here. She's "Cold Mountain's" spunky heartbeat even as the lovers are more nearly its soul.
The film has other colorful characters, so well cast that they become dimensional almost as quickly as we see them.
Stobrod Thewes (Brendan Gleeson, atypically tender) is Ruby's estranged father, come home to make amends and pass his final years, a situation just explored in "The Missing."
Pangle (Ethan Suplee) is his half-wit sidekick.
Sally (Kathy Baker) and Esco Swanger (James Gammon) are the neighbors who offer Ada charity.
The widowed mother Sara (Natalie Portman) is among those who offer Inman shelter.
Even smaller roles are inhabited by gifted actors -- Jena Malone as a ferry girl, Tom Aldredge as a blind man and James Rebhorn as a doctor.
Writer-director Anthony Minghella ("The Talented Mr. Ripley," "The English Patient") based his screenplay on the Charles Frazier's 1997 bestseller.
The film exhibits no interest in the Civil War in and of itself, much less its issues. As if life were so reductive -- Would World War II have ended when it did without U.S. intervention? -- the picture posits that everyone loses in war. Well, yeah.
What it does very well is conjure the hardship of the individual and the casualties of a nation in transition.
John Seale's bleakly beautiful cinematography complements Gabriel Yared's score, both of which figure to be in awards contention along with, quite possibly, the picture, Zellweger and several other components.
