Cold Mountain

The local movie rental place was having a "rent two get one free" deal, so I took 'em up on it and got this one, free of charge. I had heard so many bad and good things about this movie, I was very suspicious, going in. Interestingly, after watching it, I've decided it's neither as good--nor as bad--as many folks have said.

The Good: Great cinematography, realistic battle scenes, interesting characters, good special effects, and excellent acting--particularly on the part of Renee Zellweger, who I believe won the special "Redneck Girl" award given out by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. An' she deserved it. Also, the screenplay did a fantastic job of showing how the Civil War tore apart families, devastated the countryside, turned brother against brother, and generally created havoc and mayhem on a scale never experienced before or since, in the continental U.S.

The Bad: The main character embarks upon an odyssey across the rural landscape, but only after leaving his troop division, abandoning his compatriots, and becoming a fugitive deserter from the Confederate Army. His reasons for doing so--other than the obvious desire to be reunited with his woman--were vague, and mainly consisted of "It's not my war." Finding sympathy for his attitude was difficult for me, since the man volunteered to go fight the Yankees.

Our hero meets a preacher en route, and though the man is semi-likeable, he is a roguish individual who knocked up his black slave and fled from the local townsfolk, who want to string him up in the town square. Worse, it later turns out that he's as promiscuous as a hutch full of rabbits. It takes lots of courage to portray a supposed man of God as a lecherous lout in Hollywood, eh? And we see this soooo rarely, too, right? The movie's end seems like piling on. I won't say more on that. Just watch it, and see for yourself.

The Ugly: The worst aspect of this film was its treatment of the South and Southerners. Throughout the movie, we see The Confederate Home Guard--militias, if you will--portrayed as mere gangs of murdering cutthroats, who will kill anyone that they deem a possible deserter, with no trial and no mercy. I know that such things did happen, but these events were the exception, not the rule. The Yankees raped and pillaged the South, robbing people blind, killing on whims, having their way with the womenfolk, and laying whole regions waste, yet the movie barely touches on this in only one scene. Three Yankee soldiers come to a woman's farm to help themselves to her food supplies--and more. This is the only point in the movie in which Yankees are portrayed in a negative light, and it's a short scene. The rest of the film focuses on the Southerners preying on each other. But in reality, the Northern Aggressors caused far more death and destruction amongst the civilian populace of the South than Southerners did. So I thought this was a bizarre portrayal, to say the least. Additionally, every Southerner in the movie, without exception, was shown as naive, stupid, or evil. This is fiction in its purest form, without a trace of truth in it.

In conclusion, the film could have been far worse; but it also could've been far better. The gushing reviews were unjustified and exaggerated. Of course, with all the criticism I've heard about this movie, I expected to see Confederates acting like Nazis on horseback, lynching black children for the sheer joy of racism-in-action. But there was none of this. In fact, there were no major black characters in it. But tread easy when you watch this one. If you know your history well, everything will be all right, and you'll get a good glimpse of how awful and hellish the war was. If you're unclear about the history of the time, though, skip Cold Mountain and rent Gods and Generals or Ride With the Devil, instead.