Cold Mountain
September 2004 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

At the dawn of the Civil War, Ada (Nicole Kidman), the young daughter of a minister, meets Inman (Jude Law). The two fall in love, but immediately he goes off to fight in the Confederate Army, vowing to return to his hometown of Cold Mountain and Ada. He is wounded in battle, deserts, and begins his trek home, while Ada, whose father has died, holds things together.

The seemingly direct story found in Charles Frazier’s book is made into a rhapsodic tone poem by director and writer Anthony Minghella. Though one could easily tell the story in chronological order as I have above, Minghella tells it with time displaced, using flashback and even prophetic flash-forward techniques. Though the advertising will have you believe that this is a love story for all time, that plot is really just a device for Minghella to weave together an epic vision of one of the most tragic periods in American history, both on the battle and home fronts.

The movie opens with a stupendous battle scene that jerks the audience into the horror of this bloodiest of wars. Near the end of the struggle, the Confederate Army is under siege at Petersburg, Virginia. The Union soldiers throw up ramparts, not realizing they have created a crater that will swallow their troops when they charge, making them sitting ducks for Confederate bullets. This is surely one of the most authentic and terrifying battle sequences in film, yet it has a strange sort of nobility and macabre grandeur.

As the script flashes back to happier days, the time when Ada met Inman, we are introduced to the first of a long list of supporting character actors that make this movie memorable. Donald Sutherland as Ada’s evangelical father, Oscar winner Renée Zellweger as the coarse, serio-comic Ruby Thewes, and Brendan Gleeson as her scalawag, fiddle-playing father, are standouts in a cast that hasn’t a weak link.

The paranoia and poverty on the home front is better realized than in any other recent movie about the Civil War. Residents of Cold Mountain, a town that is, after all, not in the main battle area, live in constant fear. One poignant scene shows Ada checking a bulletin board where residents have pinned tintypes of loved ones slain in the fighting; she is checking to see if Inman has joined them.

Toward the end of the war, desertion became a severe problem for the Confederate Army, so "Home Guards" were formed. These were vigilantes who roamed the countryside looking for deserters, meting out fatal punishment not only to the escapees but to the people who harbored them as well. The bounty hunters are graphically portrayed in this movie.

The two-disc Miramax DVD set of this sweeping film is a masterpiece. The movie itself is presented in a video transfer that is highly detailed and smooth. The sound design is likewise excellent, with a near-perfect blending of dialogue, sound effects, and music. Music is very important in this movie, especially shape-note singing from the Sacred Harp tradition. (Sacred Harp music has been enjoying a revival in recent years, in part thanks to this movie.) A church scene shows the congregation enthusiastically singing one of these works, and it is so perfectly recorded that one wants to join right in.

I, for one, am getting tired of the gratuitous "extras" found in most two-disc sets. There are two of them here: production featurettes that are really promotion spots for the film. But there are also some extras on the DVD that really add to the film experience, making it richer and fuller. Chief of these is "Words and Music of Cold Mountain," a complete, live, hour-and-a-half "concert" featuring Minghella, Law, Kidman, and Gleeson in readings from the novel, and most of the excellent musicians who contributed to the soundtrack. As the focus shifts from an interview with Minghella to a reading, to a film clip, to a performance by Jack White or Allison Krauss, a greater knowledge and understanding of the movie, as well as the novel-to-screen process, is born.

There’s also a short history of the Sacred Harp singing tradition, some storyboard-to-finished-scene comparisons, a large number of deleted scenes, and a splendid commentary track with director Minghella and editor Walter Murch. All taken into consideration, this is a beautiful, poetic account of how the Civil War affected everyday folks, lovingly brought to DVD in an edition that can really be called "special."

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