Review of Cold Mountain (2003) by Filipeneto — 01 Dec 2021

The American Civil War is one of those historic moments that gave rise to a lot of movies, as it was one of the great defining moments of America's historical course. This film was directed by Anthony Minghella, who left us films as good as “The English Patient” and “Talented Mr. Ripley”, with which this film makes a trio, a “best-off” of the director. The film, by the way, was one of the great cinematographic releases of 2003 and a serious competitor at the 2004 Oscars, with seven nominations of which it managed to reach only one.

Despite being a film set in the civil war, it has few war scenes, preferring to give the audience yet another wartime romance, in “Pearl Harbor” style: he goes to fight, and she suffers in the rear, yearning for the return of her beloved. The film is happy in the way it gives an overview of the political position of North Carolina, which joined late to the Confederacy and, despite the youthful enthusiasm of some and the personal interests of others, the southern cause was not so unanimous. Much less well drawn is the romance that forms the core of the script: after all, love at first sight is something difficult to take seriously, and it is the protagonists themselves who assume that they didn't turn around and spoke long before the mobilization, despite the passion that unites them. This gives their romance a touch of incredibility.

Despite this weakness, we have two great actors committed to the maximum effort in this story: I have to particularly highlight the effort of Nicole Kidman, who gives us one of the most powerful works of her career (better than in “Moulin Rouge” and without the distance and the coolness her character demanded in “The Hours”). Insecure but courageous, hopeful in a love that had everything to go wrong, her character demanded a lot from the actress, and she was able to rise to the challenge. In the background, Jude Law is just as happy here, giving life to a farmworker who is recruited to fight in a cause he feels belongs to others and not his, until he is wounded and takes the opportunity to desert and return home. However, the character doesn't have as much subtlety and depth as it could. Much richer and more interesting is the figure played by Renée Zellweger who, like Kidman, had just been successful as the protagonist of a musical (“Chicago”, while Kidman had made “Moulin Rouge”). Her character in this film is a hardworking, empowered, self-assured woman who doesn't expect anything to be done for her... in a way, it reminded me a lot of Sofia, the character played by Oprah Winfrey in "Color Purple", many years ago. The award for her work was the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, after two years in which she was nominated and saw it slip away. The cast is completed by honorable and talented additions, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Brendan Gleeson, Donald Sutherland and Ray Winstone. On the negative side, I want to highlight the participation of Natalie Portman and Giovanni Ribisi… not because of the actors' demerits, but mainly because of the way in which the film didn't know how to use them as much as it could, because of the little relevance of their characters to the plot.

Technically, the film has a lot of qualities, starting with its impeccable cinematography, in which the skillful use of the camera allows us to have a lot of clarity, light and a beautiful color palette, giving intimacy to the most romantic or introspective scenes while still giving grandeur to the war scenes and dynamism to the action scenes. The addition of excellent visual and sound effects, often using CGI and other digital tools, was a bonus to the entire cinematic show. The sets and costumes are perfectly suited to the time and period portrayed, with no glaring anachronisms that would make a historian pull out his hair. The film is relatively long, two and a half hours long, but it was well edited, and I only felt it drag on in some very concrete scenes. The dialogues were well done, but it's the monologues that give it more drama thanks to the characters' letters, which are a little too melodramatic. The soundtrack does a satisfying job, but it also doesn't have any themes that particularly stand out.