An Immortal Depiction of Love and Mortality

Anthony Minghella's newest film is a Homeric journey of epic proportions.
The film is scheduled to open next Berlinale.

Recently I had the good fortune to attend a test screening of “Cold Mountain” also opening Berlinale. Based on the much lauded novel by Charles Frazier, the barebones of this epic are nothing too original. A pair of star-crossed lovers are separated prematurely by a war, in this case the Civil War, setting in motion the Long and Miserable journey home. Homer came up with the idea when he wrote "The Odyssey" two thousand years ago, but director Anthony Minghella unravels his tale so carefully that you can’t help but feel he’s breaking new ground. After all, that is the mystery of love. A million times we relive its trauma, and every time it’s utterly, incredibly, dazzlingly new.

Still, what is truly new about Minghella’s film, despite its obvious aspirations to win over the Motion Picture Academy, is the director’s willingness to take his time, to draw the maximum effect from a minimum of plot. For an 80-million-dollar period piece, this is a major risk—and it pays off resoundingly. Episodic but never stilted, the movie alternates seamlessly between its two separate but overlapping storylines, each isolated scene building upon the last, until the stars align for a tremendous and shattering resolution of both story and essence.

Jude Law plays Inman, the handsome young mystery who stumbles his way into the Confederate Army, but not before he falls for a naïve little brat named Ada, who lucky for us comes in the shape of Nicole Kidman. They are drawn together for no better reason than that they’re the best looking folks in all Cold Mountain, which is precisely the point: in a time of chaos and war, where blood routinely runs in the rivers, nothing could feel more solid than transitory love. Kidman’s shining white face becomes Law’s lighthouse, drawing him forever back to his native shore. On his voyage, Law docks at a dozen islands of soothsayers and murderers, an extraordinary cast of characters that includes Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Natalie Portman, each challenging him to emerge the more dedicated to remain true to himself, that is, true to his extraordinary love.

Indeed, it is for good reason that Nicole Kidman is Nicole Kidman. After the death of Ada’s father, played by Donald Sutherland with that strange wisdom of true aristocratic Southerners, she comes to learn the hard way that life, by its nature, is hard. Raised rich, taught only to look pretty, suddenly Ada must learn to support herself like a man in a world without men, if only to survive to the day when her man will return. One can imagine then no better actor for the role than Kidman, who brings to it the untouchable beauty of an ice princess, combined later with the indomitable will of a woman who can’t wait to shoot the head off a rooster. Kidman paces herself perfectly. We always see the one part of her in the other, until the two come together, the princess and the farmer, for one walloping romp with Law in the hay.

But Kidman can’t go it alone. Renee Zellweger, Hollywood’s other leading lady, helps her along in what will undoubtedly prove the most astounding performance by anybody this year. As the hardnosed farmhand Ruby Thewes, Zellweger looks impressively plain, but you mustn’t be fooled by the cover. Snickering and strutting, she works the vegetables out of the ground like a force of nature. And she is so utterly believable holding her rake that we want her on screen all the time. Every jibe Ruby makes, every gentle insult she hurls at Ada, is matched by this brilliant actress with a turn in her hips, a lift of her arms, a flare at the tip of a nostril. Add to that, she’s absolutely hilarious. Revelation, tour-de-force, Oscar-winning, what have you, Zellweger uses Ruby Thewes to leap from stardom to immortality.

The film as a whole, however, is nothing if not a tribute to mortality itself. Barely a few shots into it, a horrible explosion tears through a line of Confederate soldiers, blowing skin right off a thousand men’s bones. The ensuing Battle of Petersburg looks like a Medieval depiction of hell, with bayonets for pitchforks and real blood for paint. Minghella doesn’t flinch at gore, but it’s hard to fault him for being insensitive, because the more tangible the presence of death, the more urgently we feel the need for love. All the technical aspects of the film, the seamless costumes, the eerily real set-piece sets, the million unremarkable props that together convince us we’re really in the midst of the Civil War—they worked so magically because they served this purpose: you must find beauty in the present, because tomorrow may spell the end.

Simple, perhaps, but so is everything great. No other modern filmmaker has done so fine a job as Minghella depicting the game that beauty and death play with each other. What sets the plot of “Cold Mountain” in motion is a bullet to Inman’s neck. The bullet nearly kills him, and were Ada not waiting for him back at home, he probably would have let himself pass away. Instead, he makes the decision to live on, at least for the time being. So he goes to the beach, where invalids are using the saltwater to tend their wounds. The waves lick the sand as the men lap up the water, delighted at the chance to horse around. It’s a beautiful scene. But it doesn’t last. And that makes it all the more beautiful.
David Sauvage, October 12, 2003