Cold Mountain: A Look Back
I remember when Cold Mountain was released. It was the first year that I watched the Oscars and the year I fell in love with Nicole Kidman and Jude Law. I remember nothing of my first viewing besides the love story and Renee Zellweger chewing on all of the available scenery. Since I'm finishing teaching my Civil War unit, I decided to take a look back at Cold Mountain to see how it holds up.
It doesn't. Simply put, this movie is a failure from start to finish. It wants so badly to be a deep, symbolic look at both the battlefront and homefront of Civil War North Carolina, but the whole production is drowning in a combination of doing too much and not enough at the same time. Each of the characters drawls platitudes in ridiculous southern accents without saying much of anything at all. This leaves us with caricatures that serve as little more than pretty cardboard cutouts for the viewer to project their assumptions upon.
The only character who makes a real impression is Natalie Portman's Sara, a war widow left with a sick child to care for. Though her dialogue is no better than the others, Portman brings a real presence and lived-in feel to her role that the rest of the cast lacks. You truly feel for Sara, and I found myself wishing I could spend the rest of the film seeing where her story went. Renee Zellweger's role is all shouting in a cartoon accent, pursing her lips, and making sure that no one else pulls focus. I've enjoyed Zellweger in other roles, but this is Razzie-worthy and at no point does it feel like anything other than an actress playing an important role.
Speaking of shouting, the whole movie is a contest between the music and the shrieking of guns and voices that the picture can't seem to leave alone for longer than a minute. Even scenes with minor characters, like the normally excellent Philip Seymour Hoffman, are played with much vocalizing and over the top reactions. It's like the actors think they'll be cut from production if they aren't operating at Nicholas Cage levels of overwrought commitment constantly.
If the noise (and terrible sound mixing) isn't bad enough, the plot serves as pre-Game of Thrones misery porn. While I do genuinely enjoy the film's attempt at showing the real horrors of the war, our characters are forever being double-crossed, sexually assaulted, or tortured. I get it. I teach it. The civil war was incredibly hard for everyone it touched. However, it feels exploitative and cheap to have every character besides the main three under constant threat of attack.
Overall, I think I would give Cold Mountain a 2/5. It's just such blatant Oscar bait and it's honest commitment to maudlin melodrama can't save the poor script, directing, and characterization. For my next post, I'll be exploring the way gender roles are observed in the film. With the contrast between Kidman's meek version of Scarlet O'Hara and Zellweger's Yosemite Samantha, you'd think there would be an interesting look at the futility of social expectations during war. However, like everything else in the film, the viewer is left wanting more and less at the same time.
It doesn't. Simply put, this movie is a failure from start to finish. It wants so badly to be a deep, symbolic look at both the battlefront and homefront of Civil War North Carolina, but the whole production is drowning in a combination of doing too much and not enough at the same time. Each of the characters drawls platitudes in ridiculous southern accents without saying much of anything at all. This leaves us with caricatures that serve as little more than pretty cardboard cutouts for the viewer to project their assumptions upon.
The only character who makes a real impression is Natalie Portman's Sara, a war widow left with a sick child to care for. Though her dialogue is no better than the others, Portman brings a real presence and lived-in feel to her role that the rest of the cast lacks. You truly feel for Sara, and I found myself wishing I could spend the rest of the film seeing where her story went. Renee Zellweger's role is all shouting in a cartoon accent, pursing her lips, and making sure that no one else pulls focus. I've enjoyed Zellweger in other roles, but this is Razzie-worthy and at no point does it feel like anything other than an actress playing an important role.
Speaking of shouting, the whole movie is a contest between the music and the shrieking of guns and voices that the picture can't seem to leave alone for longer than a minute. Even scenes with minor characters, like the normally excellent Philip Seymour Hoffman, are played with much vocalizing and over the top reactions. It's like the actors think they'll be cut from production if they aren't operating at Nicholas Cage levels of overwrought commitment constantly.
If the noise (and terrible sound mixing) isn't bad enough, the plot serves as pre-Game of Thrones misery porn. While I do genuinely enjoy the film's attempt at showing the real horrors of the war, our characters are forever being double-crossed, sexually assaulted, or tortured. I get it. I teach it. The civil war was incredibly hard for everyone it touched. However, it feels exploitative and cheap to have every character besides the main three under constant threat of attack.
Overall, I think I would give Cold Mountain a 2/5. It's just such blatant Oscar bait and it's honest commitment to maudlin melodrama can't save the poor script, directing, and characterization. For my next post, I'll be exploring the way gender roles are observed in the film. With the contrast between Kidman's meek version of Scarlet O'Hara and Zellweger's Yosemite Samantha, you'd think there would be an interesting look at the futility of social expectations during war. However, like everything else in the film, the viewer is left wanting more and less at the same time.
Comments
Post a Comment