Cold Mountain (film)

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This article is about the film. For the novel, see Cold Mountain (novel).
This article is about the film. For the mountain in North Carolina, see Cold Mountain (North Carolina).
Cold Mountain

film poster
Directed by Anthony Minghella
Produced by Albert Berger
William Horberg
Sydney Pollack
Ron Yerxa
Written by Anthony Minghella
Charles Frazier
Starring Jude Law
Nicole Kidman
Renée Zellweger
Ray Winstone
Eileen Atkins
Brendan Gleeson
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Charlie Hunnam
Jack White
Music by Gabriel Yared
Distributed by Miramax Films
Release date(s) December 25, 2003
Running time 152 min.
Language English
Budget $83,000,000
IMDb profile

Cold Mountain is a novel by Charles Frazier, which was adapted by Anthony Minghella into a film in 2003. Minghella subsequently directed the film. The movie stars Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Brendan Gleeson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ray Winstone and Natalie Portman. Rock musician Jack White, and actors Cillian Murphy and Jena Malone also had roles in the film. Although set in Haywood County, North Carolina, it was filmed mostly in the Transylvania region of Romania.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Jude Law plays a Confederate soldier named W. P. Inman, who meets Ada (Kidman), and is at the fledgling stages of a relationship with her when he marches off to war. After countless battles and losses of friends, and seeing the South losing, Inman becomes fed up with war, and starts off on foot for his home on Cold Mountain, in North Carolina, and the woman he loves. But Ada is a city woman who only recently moved to the rural farm where her minister father has recently died, and struggles to keep the farm going with the help of Ruby (Zellweger), while all the men are off at war. Ada and Ruby have several tense encounters with men who, rather than serve as soldiers, stayed behind and now round up deserters for the army. It is with these hunters that Inman will eventually have an inevitable show-down.

The film begins with a vivid recreation of the Battle of the Crater.

Cold Mountain is a real mountain in Haywood County, North Carolina located in the Pisgah National Forest. However, the village of Cold Mountain as referred to in the movie did not exist. The small settlement was actually called Bethel.[1]

W. P. Inman (his first name was William Pinkney, although this is not mentioned in the film) was a real person from Cold Mountain who served in the Confederate Army, from which he deserted twice, and is reputedly buried in a local cemetery. His descendants still live in the area.[2] The real Inman served as a private in Company F of the 25th North Carolina Infantry.[3] He was the great-great-uncle of the novel's author, Charles Frazier, and his regiment did participate in the fighting in the Siege of Petersburg, including the Battle of the Crater. Frazier, a native of western North Carolina, very loosely based the award-winning novel on his ancestor's story.

[edit] Awards and nominations

Renée Zellweger won the Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance.

In addition, movie was nominated for, but did not receive, the following awards:

[edit] Legacy

The film was one of an increasing number of Hollywood productions made in eastern Europe, chiefly because of much lower costs in the region, but in this specific instance because Transylvania was less marked by modern life than the Appalachians (fewer power lines, telephone poles, paved roads and so on). This caused some controversy in North Carolina, although in fact an estimated 95 percent of feature films and television shows made in the state since the 1980s were set somewhere else.[citation needed] The film also marked a technological and industry turnaround in editing. Murch edited Cold Mountain on Apple's sub-$1000 Final Cut Pro software using off the shelf G4's. This was a leap for such a big budgeted film, where expensive Avid systems are usually the standard NLE tool. His efforts on the film were documented in the 2005 book Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple's Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema.

The film was met with generally positive reviews, receiving a 77% "fresh" rating on the website RottenTomatoes.com, which monitors film reviews and opinions. Many critics noted the film for its realistic portrayal of the Civil War and for elaborating on the civilian aspects of the war. However, some felt the film was marred by an episodic quality and a morose tone which muddled the love story. However, Charles Frazier's original novel is written in this fashion, and the relationship between Inman and Ada is exaggerated strongly in the film to be more of a cliche romance. Despite the criticisms, nearly all critics were favorable towards Zellweger's performance, some even stating that she stole the film from her costars Law and Kidman.

The film was considered a contender for the Best Picture Academy Award for the year 2003, but failed to garner a nomination, although it did earn the nomination for Best Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes. Despite not being nominated for the Best Picture award, the film did manage to pick up seven nominations, and one win for Zellweger as Best Supporting Actress.

[edit] Soundtrack

See: Cold Mountain (soundtrack).

The Cold Mountain soundtrack shares producers (T Bone Burnett) with the soundtrack for O Brother Where Art Thou, a largely bluegrass album with limited radio play that still enjoyed commercial success, and garnered a Grammy. As a result, comparisons were drawn between the two albums. The Cold Mountain soundtrack, however, also employs many folk and blues elements. It features songs written by Jack White of The White Stripes (who also appeared in the film in the role of Georgia), Elvis Costello, and Sting. Costello and Sting's contributions, "The Scarlet Tide" and "You Will Be My Ain True Love", were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and featured vocals by Bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. Gabriel Yared's Oscar-nominated score is represented by four tracks amounting to approximately fifteen minutes of music.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Greenville Online
  2. ^ Atlanta Journal Constitution
  3. ^ National Park Service CWSS
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