Wired Mesh

A Mountain of Beans

In light of the mildly hostile discussion of Cold Mountain taking place here, I thought it might be fun to drag up a nugget from the Pulse movie vaults. It explains why I, at least, was no great fan of the film. Not that anybody asked, but it's a dull, gray day, and it's good to have distractions.

Remember, tomorrow you can come here to read Josiah's drug reference-laden insights on The Big Bounce, assuming you haven't been industrious and already read them in the "Isaac Wardell issue" of the Pulse.

“Cold Mountain” tries too hard to justify good lovin’ in bad times

By Aaron Mesh
Published in the January 7-13 issue of the Pulse

“The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” Humphrey Bogart declared to Ingrid Bergman at the climax of “Casablanca,” and Hollywood has been busy ever since making wartime romances that willfully ignore this noble sentiment. “Cold Mountain” is the latest endeavor to construct a grand peak out of this hill of beans; its romantic leads Inman (Jude Law) and Ada (Nicole Kidman) are so consumed by sexual yearning that they, and director Anthony Minghella, regularly forget that there’s a war on. The conflict in question is the Civil War, but this matters little: with the exception of a few banjo pickers and some cheery Confederates hooting about killing Yankees, there is nothing in the film’s two and a half hours that feels distinctive of any particular time and place. (The film is set in the Appalachians but was shot in Romania, a sure sign that free trade is destroying job opportunities for American mountain ranges.) Minghella and his actors are so concerned with telling a Transcendent Tale of Love that they can’t be bothered with such small matters as secession and slavery.

My quarrel with “Cold Mountain” is not a philosophical one. There is something a bit myopic about the idea that the passion of two good-looking people is more important than any turmoil that surrounds them, but to dismiss “Cold Mountain” on these grounds would mean rejecting not only the entire tradition of wartime films, but also every literary work from, say, the High Medieval era. No, my problem with the film is that it lacks the courage of its own narcissistic convictions. It tries too hard, laboring to show that the love shared by Inman and Ada is precious and unspeakably important, and that pretension squeezes any life out of the characters. They aren’t individuals, simply symbols of chivalric ardor. Law and Kidman both convey the urgency of their passion by putting on their Serious Frowny Faces; they look like little children at a distant relative’s funeral, trying hard not to laugh. And Minghella ratchets up the solemnity by adding scenes with an oracular wishing well, foreshadowing the characters’ fates in a way that you simply shouldn’t do unless your name is Herman Melville.

So when Inman and Ada do finally meet their destinies, it’s two vaguely drawn, grimly acted people coming to an end that we’ve been told over and over is going to happen, and that we have been reminded with equal frequency is quite meaningful. I’ve ridden amusement park rides that offered a less controlled experience.

The awful, stifling atmosphere of the movie might be a direct result of how good its first 15 minutes are. Minghella produces an overpowering recreation of the Battle of the Crater at Petersburg, as Union forces plant explosives under Confederate trenches. The resulting explosion is awful, in both senses of the word: the fireball is both a brilliant cinematic spectacle and a sickening force of death. (In one shocking image, a soldier’s clothes are ripped from his body by the same wall of flame that peels his flesh.) The scene grows even more stunning when thousands of Union soldiers pour into the hole cut by their dynamite and are just as suddenly trapped below Greycoats shooting down from the rim of the smoking crater. The harsh harmonies of the Sacred Harp Singers burst onto the soundtrack, and the impact is overwhelming, like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to horrible life.

The scene certainly seems to overwhelm Mighella, who spends the rest of the film trying to justify Inman and Ada’s affection in the midst of such brutality. Inman abandons the Army after the battle, and wanders through a series of the most blatant star cameo appearances since “The Muppet Movie.” Back on the home front, Ada waits mournfully and Kidman twitches her face a lot to let us know that she is very sad. (She is joined in running the family farm by Renee Zellweger, who overacts as a hillbilly but is so relaxed doing so that her character eventually becomes the only emotionally affecting presence in the movie.)

And above it all, Minghella uses heavy-handed music and voiceovers to remind us that while war is clearly hell, true love is heaven. He eventually resorts to a sex scene straight out of an Enrique Iglesias video, with swift cuts, candlelight and brief flashes of Kidman’s Southern territories. It is a laughable sequence, almost too awful to be offensive, and it’s a desperate attempt to use sensuality to justify the hill of beans that Ada and Inman’s love looks like compared to the opening horrors of battle. Here’s looking at you, id.

Posted by mesh at February 10, 2004 10:51 AM | TrackBack