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Cold Mountain

Movie Cold Mountain Director Anthony Mingella Cast Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Rene Zelleweger, Donald Sutherland

By Subhash K Jha

At the end, when the film’s desperately estranged lovers finally come face-to-face, Ada (Nicole Kidman), gun defiantly in hand, can’t recognize Inman (Jude Law)!!! It’s a moment straight out of Roman Polanski’s terribly sublime The Pianist where the protagonist at the end of German siege waves frantically at his libeartors, "I’m not a Nazi I’m a Jew" as they shoot at the sinister stranger. Moments of heightened poignancy embroider Cold Mountain like stars and stripes on a soldier’s uniform. Indeed it’s time for director Anthony Mingella to indulge in some selfcongratulation. He’s what I’d call the master of manipulative romanticism. Like his immensely satisfying(and far superior) The English Patient, Cold Mountain is about two mis-allied people frantically in love, looking to find each other. As in the earlier film the lovers are joined together in thought by the wounded male protagonist’s communications with compassionate women whom he encounters on the way to his loved one. The picaresque poignancy of a wounded soldier’s weary way through a famished hinterland of risks and memories is graphically captured on screen. There’re pockets of intense introspection in the narrative where Minghella mingles memory with brutality , lyricism with violence. John Seale’s cinematography captures the essence of the cold forbidding outdoors in haunting postures. At the centre of the romance are a series of unsettled characters whom the soldier reaches out for momentary salvation. In The English Patient it was Juliette Binoche sharing Ralph Fieness’ tortured memories of love during World War 2. In Cold Mountain Minghella goes back to the US Civil War in the 1960s where Inman (Jude Law) encounters a series of compassionate women who offer him solace, food and even sex. But he "preserves" himself for the glorious reunion. The best illustration of the soldier’s trysts with feminine compassion is the scene with the widow Sarah(Natalie Portman) with a baby in rain-soaked shack in the wilderness. She first invites him in , then requests him to get into bed, "Just to hold me, nothing more." The whole sequence is devastatingly tragic. In terms of the emotional terrain covered this encounter between two lacerated strangers ranks next to no other sequence about strange meetings in critical times. At the end of it Sarah is attacked by savage yankees. Ironically she shoots down the only attacker who tries to be kind to her and her baby. And there, we have the most gloriously revealing statement on the ravages of war. It’s those who deserve it the least who suffer the most during critical times. Minghella’s narrative is strewn with scenes of savagery. The main battle scene at the start is filmed like a frenzied opera. It ends just as quickly as it starts...to pave the way for the protagonist’s painful pilgrimage to love. The frames during the war scenes resemble balls of violent fire, drawing an exquisite contrast with the tranquil territory that Inman wants to reach. Throughout there’s a constant pull and push between love and violence, compassion and survival. All these chic contrasts involve a great deal of deliberation which often shows up on screen in picture-postcard correctness. For instance, the war-deserters are hunted down by characters who look like villains in a spaghetti western rather than characters in a thoughtful treatise of true love. Cold Mountain is neither about war nor love, but about survival-of self, dignity and love in trying times. My greatest reservations are with the Rene Zellewer character. She plays the ‘Feisty Diversion’. The let’s-get-some-sassy-spirit-into-the-show character. The minute she joins Kidman on her farm to rejuvenate the older woman’s sagging spirit and fortunes, the narrative acquires a predictable comportment. This section of the film is about two spunky women making their way through a crisis, and let’s not get confused about that. When Jude Law finally arrives back to the arms of his love, you expect a stirring D.H. Lawrentian triangular tussle of loyalty and affection among the two women and the man in their midst. Initially the director does promise us tantalizing glimpses into a brewing storm on the farm. But nothing happens. In fact the lovers union is anti-climactic. Sure, Nicole Kidman and Jude Law do their moan-and-purr love scene(substantially cut by our censors). But here you that feeling of a grand eruption being hastened forward. There could’ve been more chemistry between the lead pair. But then, in a way that’s also a measure of the distance between the characters they play. Throughout the film Ada and Inman are apart. The love is almost all in the mind and heart. The couple’s efforts to "preserve" themselves for each other are so Oriental in spirit, you wonder if Hollywood is rapidly moving towards Indian cinema and its themes of sacrosanct monogamy. In one of the most memorable moments , Nicole Kidman’s father, played by Donald Sutherland tells her he spent a very short time with her mother before she passed away. "And that was enough to last me a life time." Love as a raincheck, has never been a more sublimely wrapped in mush. Minghella often slips into supreme schmaltz, something he had never done in the masterly The English Patient or the bizarrely brilliant The Talented Mr Ripley where Jude Law had played the consummate con artiste. Here in Cold Mountain Law breaks your heart as an artless victim of fate. Though Jude Law is evocative you do get the feeling that the script was angling for Tom Cruise. The cast is acutely attuned to the periodicity, so much so that you somethimes crave to watch them let go. Nicole Kidman is picture-perfect. She expresses torment in measured trickles. She’s the human embodiment of a programmed jingle, which isn’t such a negative thing really, unless you’re looking for a touch of Susan Sarandon in Meryl Streep.. Rene Zellweger is brought in to provide the feisty contrast. She seems to be playing Bridgette Jones in the 19th century.. Like its title Cold Mountain is a little cold and clinical around the heart. It penetrates our attention space with surgical accuracy. And succeeds in making a really really deep place within our saturated and cynical hearts