Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain is one of those films that comes simply oozing pedigree: from the director of The English Patient, starring last year’s Best Actress, and based both on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel AND one of the greatest works of classical poetry. Surely then, it can be little more than a blatant awards-grabber, another Miramax Trojan Horse sent into our midst to overwhelm us with its worthiness and intelligence?

Actually, Cold Mountain might well overwhelm you, but not with its worthiness, but rather with its exemplary narrative structure, its layered storytelling, gorgeous photography and some stunning performances from its high-profile cast. Jude Law, in the least showy but most important role, plays a soldier sent to fight in the American Civil War, while Nicole Kidman counterbalances him as the woman he loves, left to fend for herself in a world that has suddenly turned on its head. As her man begins his odyssey home from the front lines, Kidman’s Penelope is forced to grow from girl to woman, and in the process protect herself and those around her from the lawless lawman who has taken control of the sleepy Cold Mountain.

Cold Mountain is a film ripe with incident and character, flowing seamlessly from one encounter to the next, giving equal import to Law’s roaming soldier and Kidman’s struggling farm girl. And each encounter layers the story with meaning, interlinking the two lovers inextricably and exposing the hypocrisies, brutalities and everyday magic of existence, factors that are as relevant now as they were during the Civil War.

Anthony Minghella directs the film as you would expect from an English teacher– this is a beautiful, heavily symbolic and deeply intelligent work, one that bristles with hidden meanings and visual coding. That’s not to say that it’s some kind of pretentious puzzle for pedants, but rather that Cold Mountain is a film that has almost everything a true cinephile could hope for. And, for action fans, it has one hell of an explosion…

Greg Taylor