Breathtaking Journey of Love.
Cold Mountain is a beautiful movie set during the American Civil War. A North Carolina town of Cold Mountain has sent it's beloved sons to war leaving behind Mothers and Lovers. Our two main characters are Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Inman (Jude Law) two Cold Mountain residents dedicated to there reunion after the war, but the war drags on and there correspondence is the only thing that unites them in a terrible time of American History.

The movie tells of Inman's journey back to Ada and the parrallel story of Ada trying to survive on her fathers farm. Both characters take a journey in spirit and determination to survive the horror that has become there existance during the war.

I loved the intertwining of music and drama in this movie. Anthony Mingella did, as expected, an excellent job etching the powerful feelings of hope and dismay with haunting music written by Sting and performed by the clear voice of blue grasses own Alison Krauss. I am from North Carolina am familiar with the native music of the area and thought the music in the movie very similar and so wonderful.

Although, this is a Love Story more than a movie of the American Civil War it stirred the feeling of my Southern Roots. The movie did not contemplate the reasons for the Civil War but it was a vehicle for ours lovers seperation. I found the depiction of the Petersburg battle flawed not entirely accurate to history but then again the war is not the focus in the movie.

I was in aw of the cinemontography of this movie, magnificent. A gorgeous movie that needs to be seen.

Perhaps I am biased, since I am a North Carolinian, but I thought this movie excellent, bittersweet, wonderfully acted, and crafted by the best in the movie business today. I would recommend this movie.

I was so touched by the Lovers' correspondence between each other the quiet love between two people spelled out in words. You hear Ada reading her letters to Inman on his journey back to her and your heart aches for the both of them......sigh.

The film which is adapted from Charles Frazier's novel of the same title, concerns two lovers (Nicole Kidman and Jude Law) who are forced apart by the outbreak of the Civil War. While some flashbacks are devoted to their brief courtship, most of the movie takes place during wartime. Law's central challenge is to return to Kidman, while hers is to keep hope alive that he will return. The eccentric characters they encounter along the way are what ultimately keeps this movie afloat.

I say this movie's attempts to be an epic ultimately hurt it for the following reasons. First, at three hours, it was too long. The movie is packed with supporting actors depicted in scenes which are not central to the overall plot. While most of these scenes work well due to excellent performances from supporting cast members such as Donald Sutherland, Philip Seymour Hoffman and especially Renee Zellweger, a couple are begging to be cut. Most notable are the scenes with Natalie Portman, who's acting is as flat as ever. The central purpose of these scenes of temptation seems to be to show the extent of Law's love for Kidman and his overall goodness, but a better movie could have brought out these qualities in less obvious, distracting and sentimental ways.

Unfortunately the manipulation, melodrama, and self-consciousness are not limited to that scene. Several other potentially powerful scenes were rendered impotent by being over-stylized. The use of the tired symbolism of birds taking flight, with building musical crescendo, during a key scene at the end provides but one example of such a distraction that abruptly yanked me out of the movie.

Another central problem with this film is the lack of heat between Law and Kidman; his acting in particular was unconvincing. By the end I was only mildly interested in whether Law and Kidman were able to get back together; I felt any scenes they might have together wouldn't match the energy of scenes involving the supporting actors, who frankly stole the show.

But thank goodness they did steal the show. The movie borrows from a tradition in the traveling epic that dates back at least as far as The Outlaw Josie Wales (and probably a lot further), by introducing eccentric characters in seemingly the most random of places. Some of the characters here are as enjoyable as those encountered in the former. But the same cannot by any means be said of the movie as a whole, which, like the New York Knicks, lacks a solid center.

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