The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 304 Days to go: 293
Movie #69: Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain is almost two different movies altogether. At first, it is a slow, mournful tale of the delicate beginnings of love being snatched away from two shy, quiet souls at the start of the Civil War. Inman (Jude Law) goes off to fight, as all men of a certain age must. Ada (Nicole Kidman) waits for him to return. Things fall apart for both of them, and they can no longer bear this separation, even if they barely know what it’s like to be together. The movie — this first part — is an embodiment of sorrow and longing. It wrenches my heart with each sweeping vista and soaring note of its score. When Ada begs, “Come back to me,” I can feel her need as if it were my own. And then, suddenly, Ruby Thewes (Renee Zellweger) shows up and breathes life and hope into the whole wide world. It’s such a dramatic shift in tone, as I said, it’s hard to believe the two halves exist in the same film.
Mind you, the worlds of Ada and Inman — and Ruby, for that matter, and Sally (Kathy Baker) and Sara (Natalie Portman) and Stobrod (Brendan Gleeson) and nearly everyone else — is still swathed in misery after Ruby’s arrival. The war has ravaged the land, the population, and the whole society of the South. The people are at the mercy of the Home Guard and the marauding Yankees, both of whom viciously abuse the power they have over everyone else, acting solely in their own interests, to their own ends, for their own amusement. Ruby doesn’t change that. What Ruby does, however, is take action. She is not one to sit back and let life happen to her. She is a woman of strength and determination who will not abide foolishness or laziness or mistreatment. She saves poor Ada’s life, no doubt about it, simply with her force of will and take-charge personality. And she faces everything in front of her with integrity and verve. “I despise a flogging rooster.”
When Ruby discovers her father still alive, the first time, she is justifiably angry yet also thrilled. When she thinks he’s been foolishly killed again, she is mad and frustrated and heartbroken. When she finds him alive the second time, she is awash with relief and fear. Ruby is fully realized in this way, capable of experience a broad spectrum of emotions about a single event because of all that came before it. She has a past and a future and a strong presence equally matched by her point of view. I love Ruby. If I had another baby girl, I would name her Ruby in a heartbeat and sing to her all the time, “Ruby with the eyes that sparkle.”
The movie uses vignettes throughout to represent the passage of time, the changing conditions, and the various trials of both the folks back at Cold Mountain and Inman as he makes his way back there on foot. Like the dozens of letters Ada writes, we see a small sampling of events: the death of her father (Donald Sutherland), the continuing encroachment of the Home Guard, the crows in the well, Ruby’s firm and vital charge of the farm, Sally’s tragedy, and brief glimpses of happiness shared with Stobrod, Pangle (Ethan Suplee) and Georgia (Jack White). Meanwhile, Inman’s journey is long and arduous and fraught with danger. He encounters the Reverend (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) twice and is appalled how a man of God can be so full of sin. At Junior’s (Giovanni Ribisi) house, the inhabitants are dirty and debauched but rewarded for their dishonesty. Maddy (Eileen Atkins) saves Inman’s life and nurses him back to health, even though it could be a risk to her and even though she has very little herself. And the young widow Sara offers him shelter and allows him to comfort her, but shows no mercy to the Yankee soldiers who would show her none. All these people have been changed by the war, some becoming opportunistic and jaded, others becoming hardened but no less human, and Inman finds that he, too, struggles to keep his head above water and to still be a man worthy of someone like Ada waiting for him. All he wants is that peace and the quiet contentment of home. It keeps him moving forward, intent on fulfilling her request. “Come back to me. Come back to me is my request.”
The vignettes also work well in highlighting how Ada and Inman’s entire relationship is just a collection of moments — brief, stolen moments — and very few words shared between them. Their love, if they have one, is more idealized fantasy than reality, and yet it’s stronger and more compelling than everything else around them, as it keeps them both going — moving forward toward each other. Their reunion is similarly brief, similarly stolen. It’s the moment she realizes the man before her is him, the moment they talk by the fire, the moment they trade vows — “I marry you. I marry you. I marry you.” And it’s the sweet, fleeting moments of their lovemaking — the moment between marriage and death.
In 2004 I was in L.A. on Oscar night (of all Renee Zellweger’s performances, I’m so glad this is the one she got an Oscar for), standing outside the Vanity Fair party when Jude Law arrived. I fell in love with him as Inman — that quiet, simple longing and fortitude of his — and shouted “I marry you” three times across the throngs of photographers. But I’m not sure it counts if he doesn’t say it back. It’s just as well, though, because my husband now infuses me with that same feeling. Our lengthy separations (due to the nature of his job) keep me always looking forward to and longing for our time together, so much that I cherish it all the more. And every day I’m without him I fill myself up with all the things I’m going to say the next time we talk; I’m forever composing messages to him in my head. And if (God forbid) I ever were to lose him, I’d still be writing to him every day. That’s what love is, to me.
Cold Mountain is a film about the preservation and perseverance of love, about the constancy of it, even through hard times and tragedies. I carry that message with me, inside my heart, always. “I like that.”
Viable Option 