Cold Mountain

04/24

Love, War/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/155mins
Starring: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zellweger
Director: Anthony Minghella
Miramax

Cold Mountain is an enjoyable and worthwhile film, but it is not necessarily the film you think you went to see.
The director is Anthony Minghella who brought us the English Patient and the two films have much in common. Minghella deals with big real-world issues — love, death, brutality, responsibility, etc. — but he somehow fails to convince that the real world he inhabits is the same real world the rest of us live in.

Cold Mountain is the tale of two lovers separated by the American Civil War — Jude Law is shy awkward country lad Inman, and Nicole Kidman is the terribly self-assured Ada. Implausibly, with barely a word but lots of meaningful stares, Law and Kidman fall for each other just in time for Law to be carted off to war.

The story splits in two. Kidman’s father dies and she is left to fend for herself and to fend off the compellingly nasty Teague (Ray Winstone) who claims dibs on Ada for himself. Meanwhile, Inman is cast into the horrors of the war. At the bloody battle of Petersberg — an actual historical event, and here a powerful set piece — Inman acquits himself bravely, but sickened by the carnage and pining for Ada, deserts. So begins a Homeric trek across war ravaged South in which Law encounters unspeakable brutality and is tempted by various sirens. The naïve country lad has his nose rubbed in the realities of the world. The transformation in Inman is conveyed with utter conviction in Law’s scarred and beaten face.

Yet, for a film that deals with big issues, it suffers from an otherworldlyness. The war was about slavery, but there is barely a black face let alone a slave or mention of the issues. Perhaps the love story is too slight to hold together the disparate elements of this big tale. In the end Cold Mountain is a bold and beautiful film that will leaving you muttering objections right up until you cave in and go watch it again.

Hidalgo (Ocean of Fire)

04/17

Adventure/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/135mins
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Omar Sharif, Zuleikha Robinson
Director: Joe Johnston
Touchstone Pictures

One of the big marketing points of Hidalgo is that it is based on the real story of a Wild West cowboy action figure, Frank T. Hopkins, who rode his faithful nag Hidalgo in all sorts of long-distance races and carried despatches across Injun country in his spare time. The maker’s claim that it is based on a real story is fair and unarguable in that it was culled from Hopkins’ autobiography. Be aware: ‘real story’ is not the same as ‘true story’, and the autobiography has lately been proven a crock of fiction.

Hidalgo is an old-style adventure yarn. Hopkins who is half Sioux and who is played by Viggo Mortensen, the sultry sword slinger and closet king in Lord of the Rings, witnesses the infamous massacre of Wounded Knee and in disgust joins Barnum and Bailey. What else do you do after an experience like that?

As a logical consequence, Hopkins is invited to Saudi Arabia to join the prestigious Ocean of Fire race across three thousand miles of desert. The Arabs have thoroughbred horses whose pedigrees go back generations and Hidalgo is only half Arab, and Hopkins is only half white or half Sioux, so they can’t be that good, can they? Issues pop out of the sand and then stick their heads right back in.

Only, of course, they are that good, and they tackle the bandits, the rogues, the assassins, the dastardly sheiks, the seducing princesses and, worst of all, the evil Brits too… Well, you’ll just have to guess the outcome.

In the process, Hopkins rescues a damsel from a harem and suffers the threat of castration. Even Indiana Jones didn’t have to face that particular peril.

To quibble is unfair. The story and action are pacey and rooted in
a more innocent time of film making. Errol Flynn would have looked great in this role and, come on, when was the last time you saw a film where the hero turned down the advances of a desirable woman because he had a horse to get back to?

Film Reviews: Chris Page

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