..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Cold Mountain
Directed by Anthony Minghella

The Civil War odyssey tale, Cold Mountain, doesn't just survive Nicole Kidman's character, a gutless Scarlett O'Hara in an Annie Hall hat, it thrives upon her. Directed by Anthony Minghella and adapted from the novel by Charles Frazier, the 2003 production cuts between the experiences of a Confederate deserter walking home and the adventures of the woman waiting for him there, with Jude Law as the soldier, Kidman as his sweetheart and Reneé Zellweger as an unrefined musician's daughter who teaches Kidman's character how to run the farm while the men are away.

Hollywood itself has been on a journey toward realism, practically since the Civil War ended. The first blockbuster film, Birth of a Nation, was a blockbuster because it replicated the War's environment with such astonishing verisimilitude, and a quarter century later, Gone with the Wind began its unmatched reign as a boxoffice champion again by accurately rendering the events and emotions of the Civil War. Today, the most popular Hollywood films are fantasy features, but that is only because special effects have reached a persuasive level of realism. Any film, whether it is a comedy or a drama, that depends upon human characters and not gimmicks to render its narrative is judged by the level of realism it achieves. And yet, the movies can never really be real. They're made in pieces, sometimes months and miles apart from one another, and they isolate singular emotional components as a substitution for the true psychological continuum.

One of the appeals of Cold Mountain is how realistic it is. It shows what a badly commanded battle was like, how people turn livestock into food, and what entertainment was like when a ragged tintype was the closest you could get to a portable DVD player. But the other appeal of Cold Mountain is how Hollywood it is, how it suggests the deaths of soldiers and farm animals with no more than subliminal flashes of violence, how it pasteurizes and amplifies the music of the era so that the music can compete successfully with the pleasures of contemporary songs, and how it cuts through the ambivalence of patriotism and comradeship to release impossible romantic ideals of love, friendship and heroism that viewers then, now and forever so desperately want to feast upon. Cold Mountain is a good old-fashioned modern Hollywood film that transports you to an imaginary real past, where the stars don't so much act their parts as beguile viewers into believing that the parts are being grandly and accurately performed. Reveling in heritage, artistry and the art of fine storytelling, Cold Mountain is seductive, satisfying entertainment, and only those who resist the magic of a well-made movie will be aware that it is stealthily unweaving and reweaving its truths.

Miramax Home Entertainment has released Cold Mountain in an outstanding Collector's Edition 2-Disc Set (35793, $30). The 154-minute feature is presented on one platter in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The picture is smooth and unblemished. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track is terrific, with a full dimensional impact, but there is a DTS track that is even better, with crisper separations and sharper tones. There is a French audio track in standard stereo, and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

Minghella is joined by editor Walter Murch on a commentary track. Murch supplies a succinct description of his craft: "Your hand runs across silk and then suddenly it's moving across tweed, and those fabrics reveal their essential nature at the point of transition. When you go from silk to tweed, that's when you understand what silk is and what tweed is."

They discuss the problems they encountered making the story work as a film. "I thought the motif of the movie would be walking sequences, but the appetite of the audience for this kind of information is almost zero. Astonishingly, there's a certain secret language of film that is interpreted by audiences in a way that it's very hard to predict, because in my mind, when I was shooting, there had to be an enormous amount of [Law's] effort in order for this to be convincing, that he tried hard to get home. In fact, quite the reverse. Any walk that isn't purposeful just feels like dillydallying."

As a foreigner, Minghella also brings a fresh perspective to the American experience. "There's a great deal of memory of the War, still. It's close enough in the collective consciousness of America that people refer to events in their family, still. I think I was a little naïve coming from Europe and venturing into this story of civil war, to realize how present the Civil War still is in America. It's a wound that has not healed."

The centerpiece of the second platter is a 93-minute live event that includes a thoughtful onstage conversation between Minghella and film critic David Thomson; almost all the members of the cast, including Kidman and Law, reading passages from the novel and related materials; and music from the film performed by Jack White, Alison Krauss, Sting and others, delivered in standard stereo with a rich immediacy. It is a pleasant change from the usual supplementary features, and just as enlightening.

In the commentary on the film, Minghella explains that, "Any scene that prepared for the next scene was vulnerable. This film always liked being pushed, pushed to the event rather than the preparation of the event." Hence, most of the 21 minutes of deleted scenes are just those sorts of transitional moments, filling in details of how characters got from one point or state of mind to the next. Having them on the DVD lets you fill in some story gaps without disrupting the movie's essential flow.

There is a standard 30-minute promotional documentary, though it is well made, and there is an even better 74-minute production documentary, which goes into many different and interesting facets about the film's creation, including a segment about the preview process that shows footage of the audience responding to questions after a screening. Also featured is an additional 4-minute segment about the music and 10 minutes of storyboard comparison clips.

July 13, 2004

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- by Douglas Pratt

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