Cold Mountain
Directed by Anthony Minghella

Cold Mountain might be the movie to beat during the upcoming Oscar race–not because it’s the year’s best movie; but because it isn’t. Written and directed by Anthony Minghella, and based on the acclaimed novel by Charles Frazier, this Civil War epic has every element Academy voters require for a stamp of approval.

For starters, it’s directed by a previous Oscar winner who happens to be intelligent, well-read and exquisitely sensitive and beloved both by collaborators and by his patrons at Miramax (Minghella’s adaptation of The English Patient jumpstarted the studio’s long streak of Oscar nominations and wins). Better yet, it’s based on a well-regarded novel, which is based in turn on one of the key works of world literature, Homer’s The Odyssey. Minghella and cinematographer John Seale tell the tale in detail-packed widescreen compositions, the better to showcase the realistically frayed costumes, sooty makeup and panoramic longshots of puny humans dwarfed by the land.

And if that’s not enough, the movie is about war, and an American war at that–which means it’s bound to resonate in contemporary ways, even if the movie itself is no great shakes. If you’re able to open yourself up to a movie, you might find yourself fighting back a tear or two as the film’s heroine, Ada (Nicole Kidman) sends her faraway love object, Confederate soldier Inman (Jude Law), a letter urging him to come home right now.

So what’s my problem? Considering what a sucker I am for Civil War movies, romantic dramas and any tale based however loosely on The Odyssey, you’d think I’d be the ideal person to fall hopelessly in love with Cold Mountain. But the movie didn’t do it for me.

The story begins with Inman facing death at the Battle of the Crater, a showdown between Union and Confederate forces that some consider to be the first time explosives were used as a weapon of mass destruction. Union attackers blew up a mine beneath rebel fortifications, creating a mushroom cloud (eerily framed and lit by Seale and his crew) and killing hundreds of Confederates. But in the followup assault, Union soldiers fell into the crater they’d created and were slaughtered by the rebs. Minghella and his collaborators crosscut between this massive showdown (depicted with appropriate horror, but also with a number of badly framed closeups, needlessly confusing closeups) and flashbacks that show how Inman ended up in this hellhole.

Turns out our guy heeded the call to war and joined the Confederate army, abandoning an idyllic existence in the small town of Cold Mountain, North Carolina. In the process, he left behind poor Ada, a pampered, socially superior beauty with whom Inman shared smoldering glances and one furtive kiss on the day he marched to war. Minghella then crosscuts between Inman’s Odyssey-inspired journey home–during which he meets characters inspired by the Cyclops, the Sirens and other Homer creations–and Ada’s Penelope-like attempts to maintain her family home, which fell into disrepair after the death of her father (Donald Sutherland, whose hacking cough is movie shorthand for, "Don’t get too attached to this guy").

I know I’m supposed to be inspired by the sheer Homeric purity of Inman’s and Ada’s struggles, but I just couldn’t give in. Part of the problem, I think, is that Inman and Ada–as conceived in this movie, at least–are Homeric in the abstract sense only. They’re less characters than concepts–stick figures modeled on Homeric ideals, then molded to fit an American pop idiom.

Having recently reread Robert Fagles’ excellent translation of Homer’s classic, I’m struck by how much deeper, more contradictory and more adult his characters are compared to the protagonists of Cold Mountain. Homer’s heroes and heroines don’t just stand for certain types of people; they are people. Part of the problem may lie in Frazier’s decision to envision the Odysseus and Penelope equivalents in Cold Mountain as chaste young ingenues, rather like protagonists in a silent-era comedy. This decision singlehandedly eliminates much of the density of Homer’s original conception.

Where Homer’s characters fear losing what they have, Frazier/Minghella’s fear losing the chance to experience what they have not experienced yet. It’s a subtle difference, but a crucial one, I think–and a good explanation for why this movie lacks Homeric heft. (Think of how much more clever, original and artful Cold Mountain might have been if it had been a comedy directed in the spirit of Buster Keaton or Preston Sturges; then again, you might just save yourself the trouble and rent O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

I went into Cold Mountain expecting either a great movie about American history or a dreamy drama about war, desire and the allure of home as both an emotional reality and a rhetorical conceit. What I saw felt like a really good Clint Eastwood movie, but with an excess of arty pretensions: scene after scene of decent characters trying hard not to get robbed, beaten, raped or shot by ruffians who are so repulsive that our heroes can slaughter them with clear consciences. Ray Winstone and Charlie Hunnam are scary as the leaders of the Home Guard, a band of old or physically unsuitable men deputized to keep watch over the home front while the young fighting men are gone. But they’re scary in that cornball, Dirty Harry villain way. They don’t truly represent historical forces, social pathologies or particular human weaknesses; they’re just big meanies.

Renee Zellweger, Brendan Gleeson and Philip Seymour Hoffman contribute dandy supporting turns as, respectively, a tough young nomad helping Ada on the farm, the nomad’s no-good but very charming fiddle-player dad, and a randy, lawbreaking preacher who joins Inman on his journey and offers such words of wisdom as, "You’ll find the good Lord very flexible on the subject of property." When these characters are onscreen, you can feel the audience’s collective spirit lift. They’re funny, disreputable and full of vigor; coupled with inventive performances, they seem like people rather than rhetorical constructs.

But soon enough, Minghella refocuses the movie’s attention on Ada and Inman, who are well-played (and thanks to the casting, easy on the eyes) but hardly fascinating enough to carry a story of such scope and length. There’s nary a slave in sight, quite a curious omission. Like The Patriot and Gods and Generals, which similarly ignored or downplayed America’s little genocide problem, Cold Mountain avoids the subject, alluding to it only in fleeting moments during Inman’s journey, in a couple of scenes involving Hoffman’s preacher, and in a brief closeup during the opening battle sequence that shows a Native American Confederate and an African-American Union soldier locked in a death embrace. This avoidance of touchy subject matter puts Cold Mountain in the same uncomfortable camp as those Civil War revisionists who keep insisting that the war wasn’t really about slavery at all.

Cold Mountain has merits. The period flavor is much appreciated; the songs strike the right balance between modern clarity and period-accurate flavor, and Minghella doesn’t shy away from battlefield gore and matter-of-fact cruelty to both people and animals (a lot of beasts get slaughtered onscreen). It’s a thoroughly professional yet weirdly flat piece of work–at once too much and not enough. I kept hoping Minghella would provide either a purer, dreamier cinematic experience (such as the Coens offered in O Brother) or a more rigorously detailed, realistic historical drama. Cold Mountain falls squarely between the two modes–a no-man’s land inhabited by Oscar-winning movies that have earned the respect of many and the adoration of few.