Cold Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) | Jude Law, Nicole Kidman

Cold Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) | Jude Law, Nicole Kidman | Highly Recommended

DVDs:

Cold Mountain (Two...

	Cold Mountain (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Jude Law, Nicole Kidman Miramax Home Entertainment, 2004 average customer review:based on 417 reviews view larger image
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A Confederate soldier struggles to return home to his beloved, while she struggles to survive the ravages of war.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 25-JAN-2005
Media Type: DVD

common people overwhelmed by war

I loved the book and found the movie just as good, which is unusual. The Battle of the Crater [not in the book] is especially good--awful, really. Confederate armies on the verge of defeat are blown to Hell by an underground mine. Well-fed, well-trained Union soldiers advance into the breech only to be mowed down by the famished, desperate and shell-shocked survivors. Courage beyond the bounds of courage. The battle ends with mutilated Federal corpses piled up like cord wood...it's not a cinematic invention...it happened just this way.

The rest of film is excellent, too, but certainly far from perfect. The home guards, chasing down disgruntled soldiers and run away slaves, are just too evil for words. As a matter of fact, they are just too evil for reality. Slaves were valuable and deserting soldiers could still serve in the collapsing Confederate armies. Wholesale murder wasn't in the cards. At the same time, a film needs villains but sometimes villainy is more effective if handled more delicately...with more subtlety.

Still the film worked for me, especially the enormous tragedy of women--impoverished, grief-stricken women--waiting for men who would never return...waiting for men who would never again plough a field or make love to them again. Multiply Ada by hundreds of thousands and we start to get a feel for the unfathomable tragedy that was the American Civil War. 620,000 men never came home...more than all the other American wars put together. The South was especially devastated...most of her military aged men were dead or crippled while, simultaneously, the Federal Government exacted full revenge on the flattened South.

Hey! It "unified" the nation or was the nation's disunion just internalized? By the way, I'm a Southernor and wasn't disturbed by "fake" accents. It's been going on long before "Gone with the Wind."

Ron Braithwaite, author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

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Highly Recommended

This film is excellent. I was very impressed with the story line and greatly appreciated the characterizations by Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellweger. If you are interested in the Civil War era, this is an appropriate film and will hold your interest.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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