MOVIE REVIEW Hard to warm up to 'Cold Mountain'

Still, the film's virtues outweigh its flaws.
By MILAN PAURICH
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
In a recent New York Times interview, "Cold Mountain" director Anthony Minghella expressed the desire that people see his new film twice before deciding whether they like it or not. While I found Minghella's comment to be rather cheeky (doesn't he know what first-run movie tickets cost these days?), I couldn't help feel a measure of sympathy as well.
To be perfectly honest, "Mountain" isn't the easiest film to warm up to, and it probably takes at least two viewings to figure out just who all these characters are, and what their relationship is to one another. (Those lucky enough to have read Charles Frazier's National Book Award-winning 1997 novel might have an easier time of it.)
I'm glad that I had the opportunity to revisit Minghella's costly Civil War epic before filing this review because my initial reaction was tepid. Although clearly a work of intelligence and ambition, "Mountain" felt scattershot and unfocused -- a lot closer to Billy Bob Thornton's disappointing "All the Pretty Horses" than to Minghella's Oscar-winning "The English Patient." Seeing it again, though, the film's considerable virtues outweighed its nagging flaws.
I still don't think Minghella has made the masterpiece he was so clearly striving for -- or a movie that I'll ever truly love -- but it definitely felt more coherent and less rambling the second time.
Weak relationship
My biggest problem with "Cold Mountain" remains the central love story between renegade Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law) and preacher's daughter Ada (Nicole Kidman). Their relationship never registers as strongly as it should for us to care whether they're reunited or not. Because Inman's long journey home to be with "true Southern belle" Ada is essentially the entire story, there's a hollowness at the film's center where its heart belongs.
The fact that these two barely know each other -- one fleeting kiss was all they shared before Inman is shipped off to war -- was precisely the point of Frazier's best seller. Law seems more distant than haunted as Inman, and Kidman strikes more sparks with Renee Zellweger's Ruby than she ever does with her male co-star.
Minghella opens with his most spectacular setpiece, a vividly brutal re-creation of the Siege of Petersburg, Va., in July 1864 that rivals the D-Day invasion scene from "Saving Private Ryan." The filthy, blood-spattered Inman introduced in this sequence bears no resemblance to the wholesome North Carolina carpenter we meet later in flashbacks explaining how he and Ada met.
Parallel stories
After recovering from a serious neck injury suffered during the Virginia battle, Inman abandons his Rebel battalion and heads back to Ada. At this point, Minghella essentially divides the film into two parts: Inman's adventures on the road, and Ada's struggle to make a life for herself on Cold Mountain after the death of her Pa (Donald Sutherland in one of many needlessly distracting cameos).
Inman's odyssey is punctuated by a series of colorful vignettes. Some (Natalie Portman's touching performance as a disconsolate Confederate widow; Eileen Atkins' crusty old coot who nurses Inman back to health) are better than others (a befuddling episode with Giovanni Ribisi playing the sole male in a household of plus-sized women; Philip Seymour Hoffman as a deranged minister).
The most affecting relationship is between Ada and Ruby, the sassy country bumpkin who moves in to help run the family farm. When Zellweger enters the movie at the 50-minute point, she brings it to life with her boisterous comic performance. The sisterly bond that develops between these two strikingly different women is profoundly moving.
Best for last
Minghella's epilogue, which shows Ada and Ruby at a latter stage in their lives, is the sweetest scene in the film. Like the best things in "Cold Mountain" -- John Seale's evocative, amazingly detailed cinematography; the luscious bluegrass music on the T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack; Brendan Gleeson's scene-stealing supporting turn as Ruby's long-lost dad -- it casts a lingering spell that sticks with you long after the closing credits.
Even if you see it only once.
XWrite Milan Paurich at milanpaurich@aol.com.