Review of Cold Mountain (2003) by Dawdlingpoet — 22 Nov 2021

This is a historical period drama with obviously war and adventure elements to it. It covers themes including civil war and the walking wounded, friendships, the countryside or rural life in general and loneliness, among others.

I quite enjoyed this film, as it features some relatively feisty, well thought out characters. There is a good use of background music, a quite unsettling, mildly sinister or creepy slow classical type of music which is quite quiet and not at all over powering or over bearing, not making the dialogue hard to follow, thankfully. The film did seem quite atmospheric due to the good use of music and it doesn't shy away from depicting some relatively gruesome aspects of war at times as well. I found myself feeling gripped to the TV set, to see what became of certain soldiers, how people managed to pull themselves out of very difficult, harrowing situations. Of course its easy to see why this could be regarded as a very grim film but yet it didn't feel entirely grim as such. There is an element of optimism about it - a sense of hope present, although its hard to explain this fully in such a review. Suffce to say, there are different scenes with different tones and some are a lot lighter than others. I suppose you could say there's an irony showcased in terms of the beauty of the surrounding mountainous/rural nature surrounding somewhat gory, violent acts.

I thought the film was well cast, with Nicole Kidman portraying Ada Monroe, a well to do lady, looking for people to help tend her land. While she appears a little distant, she seems very much like a good person at heart. Meanwhile, Jude Law plays Inman, a regular joe type who finds himself somewhat lost in the middle of the war and Renee Zellweger plays Ruby Thewes, a distinctly assertive, quick witted independent type. Ruby is probably the most memorable character - certainly either her or Ada. Also present in the cast are the late Philip Seymore Hoffman as Reverand Veasey, Giovanni Ribisi as Junior and Donald Sutherland as Reverend Monroe.

I liked some of the landscape shots used, to give us a decent overview of the 'lie of the land' you could say. It doesn't really feature especially breathtaking cinematography as such, I suppose, if your very critical of such things but I did like the setting and there were some good camera angles used, in some scenes, to highlight the landscape, such as showing the streams flowing downhill, with characters hiding or moving slowly from one part of land to another.

Content wise, the film features sex scenes with nudity and implied rape, violence, with bloody injuries and war related aggression depicted, some strong language and in general, the film is relatively frightening due to the war theme running throughout. Due to this, it has been given a 15 rating.

As far as criticisms are concerned, there's relatively little to say. It is quite a long watch, at around the two and a half hour mark and as such it would have put me off watching it until recently but I have seen a fair number of long films over the last 6-12 months and as there's less decent TV shows on, I find myself finding time to watch more longer films. If your not especially keen on character driven dramas and hope for pure action to keep you gripped to your seat throughout then this may not be ideal for you, as while there are scenes of war, the majority of the film features a small number of characters reflecting on things, being somewhat philosophical at times and thus it isn't jam packed with special effects, chases and attacks. Both of these things may be seen as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you like, of course. Perhaps it could have featured some slightly better cinematography? maybe but I don't feel I can really mark it badly due to any of that as such. It felt like quite a warm film in a sense, which I can only presume comes down to the good characterisation.

Yes I'd recommend this film, as I felt it was well cast, it is quite atmospheric and covers good themes. It is bloody and may be a little frightening or upsetting to watch at times but if you don't mind a bit of violence, then its worth checking out, especially if your a fan of the cast (Nicole Kidman, Jude Law and Renee Zellweger).